V1: mid 50's tall and skinny middle eastern guy. Really wide pre. Has 2bet me on the flop w/ top pair K kicker before on a 784 rainbow board. In general, happy to call pre w/ any face card. I'm assuming he's got suited connectors/gappers in his pre flatting range, but so far has shown up with Facecard/X sort of hands.

V2: Maybe 40 hands on the guy. Seems ok other than having a wide opening range pre. No real spew post, but he's been battling V1 in a lot of hands, though I think he'd adjust a bit more to my TAG image. Middle aged Vietnamese man.

ES~$915

Hero opens AA UTG $25, MP calls,V1 calls on BTN, V2 calls in BB.

Flop $100

JT4

x, Hero $65, fold, V1 calls, V2 calls

Turn $295

5

x, Hero $225, fold, V2 plays with chips for ~45 seconds & calls (looking for sizing critique here)

River $745

K

x, Hero with ~$600 ?

I guess we can get calls from QJ/2 combos of AJ and QQ, but that K could have 2paired his J/T. I think we'd have to fire small to extract value, but then we'd be sort of stuck if facing a c/rai. I doubt anything over 40% pot gets called by worse. I know I have a leak in missing river value, which is huge, but am wondering if this is a good spot to bet thin.

whats your image at the table?

I think we can bet non-boardway, non-club rivers for thin value.. as it rolled out..I check in this spot..

To V2? Probably someone who's tight, hasn't gotten into a big pot yet, hasn't showdown anything after scooping some pots OTF and folding some other hands OTF/T.

I'm betting $275. We can get a crying call from AJ,QQ, QJ and easy call from KQ.

Going for value seems right, we block aq, so the only hands that really got there were kj/kt/q9, meanwhile we get value from ak/kq/bluffcatchers

Clearly thin, still I think the default is B/F ~1/3 PSB to extract value from 12 combos of KQ, 6 of AK, maybe QQ. Though I think AJ/QJ will fold, have seen stranger, thus I'd opt to bet.

Turn - I'd likely go $175ish.

I bet way bigger flop and turn personally, and with that amount I'd jam river. On such drawy boards betting big has a lot more benefits.

It's not that thin imo and not betting here heads up with AA is a pretty decent leak.

Not betting seems crazy to me.

At these stakes I think it's fine to b/f a smaller amount but at higher stakes this is a shove

If you sized bigger in earlier streets it would make river a nice easy shove here too

If we talk about balance, (lol what's up guys Doug Polk here), it's a clear check. We opened UTG, bet into 4 opponents on the flop and 2 opponents on the turn. We don't have that many bluffs here and villains can easily fold all worse hands comfortably.

Pilliapina, I have had many sleepless nights thinking about the catch 22 of live poker which is that it is extremely difficult to have 3 barrel bluffing range but at the same time we often get to river with the effective nuts.

The reason it is difficult to have a 3 barrel bluff range is bc (as this hand shows) we often go extremely multiway and have face up value range when we continue. That said, we are still continuing vs. huge stations most of the time, this isn't like $200NL where we'd feel really ****ty 4 ways on a JTxs flop K turn.

This is obviously a great thing for us, we can never bluff and at the same time bet river and still get called by worse.

Also, just as an aside, because people are such stations, we actually can have 3 barrel bluffing ranges even multiway. This is because people over call flop, over call turn, but overfold river. (Because their calling ranges are huge on flop and turn but by river they realize they didnt improve (which is what they are hoping to do, even with a hand like AJ)) The trick is getting to river with decent SPR which is hard to do in live poker bc of typical shorter stacks and also bc multiway compounds the pot size.

Bet flop bigger for sure

For those advocating larger sizing on earlier streets ... with blockers are you B/F, B/C, B/3b?

Playing against a raise is pretty opponent dependent, but I'm not sure why betting smaller would make it less of an issue.

In my experience, a multiway pot at 2/5 or 5/5 doesn't play much different than 1/2. We've played our hand face up so very rarely is our opponent going to call us with a hand that we beat.

I doubt our opponent gets to the river with top pair here. This is either a missed draw, a monster that is trapping, or a scared two pair playing passively that won't fold to a bet.

I would check.

This would have been my line.

As played, if we don't think he's spewy post, he's going to fold a lot of his J, so I'd target his hands with a K. And how many V's river top pair and can then get away from it? So I'd go around 300-350.