5-10 nl

Effective stack size is 1500. Hero is a 30's white male wearing his work shirt, obvious amateur, probably viewed as weak tight. Villain is a 40's white male, obvious amateur, who has been very loose passive preflop, limping or calling raises preflop even with hands as strong as AK, and then turning up the aggression post-flop, not really giving up on them later when they hit and it's obvious that he's beat. One big hand that villain and I had played earlier where I coolered him by hitting a gut shot on the turn that gave him two pair, and I got very little value. Preflop was he limped, I over limped with J10s, LP raised, 1 other caller and both of us called. Flop was K92 rainbow, checked thru. Turn was Q putting two hearts out. He bet 100, I called, everyone else folded (the other 2 were hyper aggressive and I was hoping for someone to come over the top). River was a low heart. He checked, I bet 175, and he called with KQ.

Preflop, I raise to 40 (standard open) from CO with KQ, villain calls from button, SB calls (very good but tight reg), BB folds.

Pot is 130

Flop is AQ7

Checked to me, I bet 70, villain calls, SB folds

pot is 270

Turn is 6

I check, villain bets 110, I c/r to 320. He tanks, says "That strong? Well I still like my hand." and calls after about 45 seconds of honest agony. FWIW, I think his words are exactly how he feels. Likely strong ace (AK or AJ), possibly two pair but less likely.

Pot is 910

River is 2

I bet 520

x flop and go for 1 street (the river) if flop and turn check through. probably just bet turn again as played. all in now if you think 1k is a lot to him and or he never/rarely calls just 1 pair on the river and the turn speech is genuine and seldom A6 or A7.

OP, would you check a 6 of spades if you had a set or AQ?

Vs this player, yes

Seems like a good line if we jam riv; the $520 is bad w/ our exact hand, but would be good if we had was we are repping. Seems shoving riv is only option after c/r turn and whiffing.

The more I think about it, the more I like the turn check/raise. I think check/call isnt terrible, but theres just not enough semibluffs in his range, and I dont think Qx is betting. I wouldnt take this line vs a thinking player because your hand looks pretty FOS but based on V as described I think we get some folds from the weaker Aces in his range.

Flop bet might be questionable. I think i like checking flop and going for two streets of value even though its a bit thinner since we allow two villains more chance to realize their equity.

As played shove turn but I don't like the spot we're in. The speech+tank is pretty damn scary, but since u claim to have a handle on his words as being genuine then barrel is your only move.

Why?! Sounds like you should only check 2p+ here if you hate value...

flop cbet is horrific. worse call better fold and we protect against nothing

in fact, the cbet is so bad that to do any further analysis we should just pretend you have something that makes sense to bluff with like JTss.

so, should we bluff river? considering this is one of the very very few bluffs we can have, I think we should bluff river with all of them. as for sizing, we have a dilemna. our range is very value heavy so we want to bet less, but based on our readsthis is a player who won't fold much facing "good" odds.

as an exploitative play I would do a reverse and bet less with value hands and bet more with our few bluffs. I bet ~750 otr

What's a better play on the flop. C/call, c/fold? We have middle pair, two back door draws, and a solid image. We can rep big on this hand, which is what I eventually did. I just can't see how betting this flop is that horrendous. In fact, given my image, I'm pretty sure I can c-bet my entire range on this flop and it wouldn't be terrible.

I'm not going to be able to convince you that forgoing the option to bluff on later streets (and make more when those bluffs work) is going to be less profitable than checking flop. But I'll try anyway so what the heck

Normally we bet a street to get better to fold worse to call or for protection. We accomplish none of those things by betting flop. The only thing we gain is the option to bluff in the future.

However!!! We don't ACTUALLY GIVE THIS UP! We can still bluff in the future even if we check flop!

So actually betting flop acommplishes stone zero. We have the dictionary definition of a medium strength hand in a way ahead way behind situation.

Just check fold to big bets and sometimes peel vs small bets (but probably fold)

If these guys are so terrible that you think you can get way out of line and click buttons with little equity then by all means. But don't be surprised when they sigh call river because you only bet half pot

At least fire big on the river so they don't feel silly when they fold. If there's one thing fish hate it's feeling silly

Check the flop.

This is spew.

Check/call a reasonable sizing?

Do you think that checking flop is close to bet (bet/folding obv) or is it significantly higher EV ?

If it is close (which I personally think it is) and we do bet flop, do you prefer check/calling that turn card or keep betting?
Other than that, absolutely agree that check/raising and trying to make this villain fold TP+ type holding is spewy.

check flop, call turn....as played just put in all of your betting discs if you really insist on making him fold whatever he has, but I really don't like any street other than pre.

Yes. There's no scare cards, if checked trough turn can easily be v-bet. Depending on a turn card, even turn can be a v-bet with bare Q.

c/c depending on sizing, c/f is a realistic option and being really, really unhappy. This sizing, I'm pretty happy that I get to draw cheap. There's no shame in giving up the aggression and generally giving up the hand unless you hit.

If your plan is to get a casual sticky unknown player to fold TP+, you need a new plan.

This is fine. River follow up could be a little bigger, and turn CR could be a little bigger. I think there is a decent chance that he folds a weak top pair vs the "obvious" monster line. You may have a little more trouble convincing a good hand reader who may surmise that you wouldn't be in a hurry to give up free cards on such a draw heavy texture. But, against an unsophisticated player, with his turn weak sizing, it can't be that bad. The concern is that you have seen him flat big hands so you are little more likely to step in it here compared to a guy with a more typical 3b range.

Flop bet is debatable but also not that big a deal IMO.

rec players own me all the time with their advnaced merged cbetting strategies.

<-----Triple range merging

Yeah, perhaps there is some (a lot) of truth in this statement.

I actually think this is one of those scenarios where betting all-in has a better chance of getting called than a value-ish sizing. I think these types of players will read the all in as weaker than a scary 'half my remaining stack' bet.

Think the flop bet is getting too much criticism imo....the button can sometimes peel the two flop gutters, any of the three opponents can not fold a worse Q, any of the three opponents could decide to fold a weak ace....those last two points might seem contradictory, but imo in the game of live poker it's not.

Looks like villain has aces up a lot here to me

fwiw, I don't really like the river shell here, but I think the turn c/r is okay. I would've went a little bigger on turn with the plan of shutting down if called and unimproved.

30 pre, check flop.

As played, if you are going to c/r turn (this guy is super sticky so you'd be better off just c/c'ing and bombing if you bink imo), give yourself more fe and set up a river shove by going slightly bigger. Then only shove river if you bink.

The good news about live poker is that there are tons of villains like the one you described. The bad news is that you pretty much just need to make the best hand against them whenever they have bluff-catchers+, and optimal play vs them in general is super transparent/ABC/unbalanced/embarrassing (until you realize you've graduated to level 3).

Just read the OP. Triple barreling would be my standard line in this spot. Prob bet a little bigger on flop, doesn't matter too much, then bet close to PSB on turn, another big bet on river. We hit one of the best turn cards, that's generally a good time to keep barreling, plus we block reasonable hands he would barrel with (AK, AQ) so can't always expect to be able to put in a check raise, in which case we kind of need to make our hand to win on river probably. As played, gotta bet bigger on river or give up IMO.

V in this spot is not going to have that thought process, if he has AK+ OTR he's not folding