New to table, don't know villain, he's middle aged and scruffy, 1/3, 300 eff.

I'm in CO with AA, one limp, I raise to 16, V calls on BTN, everyone else folds.

Flop (35): 8J4

I bet 20, he calls.

Turn (75): 9

I bet 50, he calls.

River (175): 3

I bet 50 again, he thinks a few seconds (pretty casually it seems to me) and raises to 130.

I decide he's never bluffing and fold.

Thoughts on the hand, the line? Anyone doing something different on turn or river? I think a bigger bet on flop would have been good, but aside from that I'm not sure if I could have done any better. I can't x/fold turn and don't like x/calling. I could check the river, yes, but then am kind of faced with a difficult decision a lot of the time when he bets, and I kind of like the mixed thin value/blocking bet of 50... assuming villain will never be exploiting the sizing tell with a bluff-raise at the end.

I can't help but agree with your analysis. I think betting the flop for 30 is better. Your last thought is perhaps most important...is he exploiting your river sizing? At 1/3, that is pretty unlikely. I think the argument can be made you are out leveling yourself if you think that way at 1/3.

bump, I'm really curious whether other people think this is okay.

trivial fold. I doubt that V is doing that with Jx as a bluff/combo move.

$300 effective stacks are sometimes a little tricky in that we'll sometimes have trouble setting up a trivial small stackoff SPR spot, and yet at the same time we have to raise enough to thin the field. Very table dependent depending on how loose everyone is, but I sometimes just open to $30 here if I can expect a call a lot. Otherwise, I go smaller and just hope for the best.

Unfortunately a pretty meh result. OOP with an SPR of 8, which is like one of the worst spots (imo). Sometimes that happens.

Others will probably want us to bet more on the flop, but I'm actually fine with our sizing. If we bet much more, we're going to start running into commitment problems pretty quickly.

Not in love with our turn bet. A lotta hands have actually moved ahead on this card, and it's possible we were even behind on the flop. I see no purpose in continuing to build a pot on this card (worrying about runner runner flush draws is meh). I would probably check/call (I think far better chance we are ahead on the turn if we check/call rather than bet and get called).

Probably not a bad river play, and I doubt we're getting exploited by most by doing an obvious blocker bet and having someone turn a hand into a bluff.

For me, mostly our hand turned very mediocre on the turn, so unless we're up against the lol worst of calling stations, I'm not sure we should be building the pot any more.

GcluelessNLnoobG

The turn was one of the worst cards to hit, so much got there, flush and straight combos.
AA is just one pair don't fall in love with it.
Might have bet more than 1/2 pot on the flop but depending on the V he may still call with a flush draw.

I have yet to encounter an opponent that won't call a PSB+ with a flush draw on a non-paired flop. My guess is that even the majority of winning players in this forum will also convince themselves it is a profitable move most of the time (and I'll admit I find myself in that category some of the time too).

The problem is less that than we have to also balance this with our other goals, one of which is not building too big a pot *if* we don't feel committed.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Preflop and flop are fine. Turn is one of those situations where there is no simple answer. River is OK as long as you don't always go with a blocking bet. Folding to the raise is fine, though you will be shown a bluff from time to time. Sizing could be slightly better by making turn smaller and river a touch larger. The same size bet may induce a raise.

The best option on the turn depends a lot on opponent. Without knowing opponent or anything about how they play both checking and betting turn are fine. I prefer checking simply to keep pot size smaller as the turn is one of the worse cards possible. But everything at that point is about having some sort of line read to go on.

Among the people I play at 2/5 it depends. In limped pots where the pot is small and implied odds big many will over pay on the flop. However, most of them can do enough odds to get away from a flush draw when facing a bet big enough to kill there odds.

I was just getting my hair cut and thinking about this hand, I thinking that the flop bet was just fine not to bloat the pot too much and be ready to muck when the draws come in.

I would go 25 on the flop, and I don't feel that's committing. On this turn card I'm going to c/c down mode. There's not a wide range to keep getting value from, we can get bluffed off the best hand OOP, and it protects our turn/river checking range.

C/f turn

Honestly, I don't see any of the hands you were beating call the turn bet.

I think I shut down my aggression on the turn with the intent of calling one decent sized street. The one advantage of your smaller flop bet is that could make the price better.

It was single raised pre, so a check could draw a bet out of AJ, or a bluff from someone floating. You could also get flushes to check back the turn now and again hoping you'll bluff the river.

AP, fold.

Up until the turn, the only thing I'd do different is bump up the bet to $25. In abstract, I agree when holding an over pair to bet as much as people will call, but I want to bet other hands the same way on the flop. Hence, I drop the amount a bit.

A large part of his calling range of the flop is going to be FD. If he has a pair, a generic villain is going to be looking to get to showdown cheap. He'll rarely bet if you check. If he has the flush, he's never going away. At the same time, lots of villains if they were cbetting with a FD will check. Therefore I like a check on the turn to set up a decent sized value bet on the river.

The river bet is just way too small. It isn't going to stop a flush from raising. Nor after the action so far is a TP type of hand going to call often.

So you x/call turn, and then on river if he bets again...? Probably folding, basically x/deciding?

I agree with your thinking, I've sort of been feeling like I just go into x/call mode a bit too often. It's gotten me into some uncomfortable spots that would have been more clear and easy decisions had I taken a bet/fold line.

As someone else suggested above, there is even some argument for just check/folding the turn some of the time; I mean, this card completes so much (flush, straight, two pairs, etc.). But I'm probably leaning to a check/call of a reasonable turn bet and then deciding on the river (mostly check/folding as most opponents insta-checkback TP type hands and a lot of opponents don't bluff busted draws, although admittedly we don't have much of a read here).

I would more take a bet/fold line if the turn was a blank and we could still get value from draws / lottsa other hands. This turn is so gross we're just not getting that much value from that many worse hands.

GimoG