Line/Thought process check in a live tournament hand

£120 ($185) live tournament – largest live tournament in the UK circa 4k entries.

Level 5 of Day 1C Blinds 100-200 25a
9 handed table
I have 20k, villain late regged at the start of this level and has 27k (25k starting stack).

Folded to villain in the HJ. He has been at the table for 2 orbits. I vaguely recognise him but can’t pinpoint him. Young, composed and handles his chips well. He’s chipped up since he’s come to the table opening in late position basically every time it’s been folded to him. My basic take on him is that he’s decent and aggressive.

He opens the HJ to 500; I am in the CO and look down at ThTd. I’m 100bbs deep and decide to flat. Is this bad? I think I flat with these dynamics almost every time, I don’t see the point of bloating the pot other than to increase the chances of playing heads-up, but with these stacks I don’t mind playing multi-way as the table is generally weak and people do stack off light.

BTN and SB fold and the BB who has been playing lots of hands and has around 35k calls.

1725 in the pot.

The flop is Qh 9s 2h. The BB checks, villain continues for 1.1k. I expect him to continue here with the vast majority of his range. I don’t like raising here as I think we get enough information out of the BB by flatting and don’t see the value vs the villain in raising TT. Am I right? Does anyone advocate folding or strongly prefer raising?
I call and the BB folds.

3925 in the pot.

The turn is the 9h making a board of Qh9h9s2h. The villain continues for 2.2k.
I have the Th which is an unimportant blocker and gives me some unreliable equity to win if I’m behind. I think this card is a great card for him to double barrel with if he has the Ah or Kh. I also expect him to continue with his flop value range to get value from drawing hands that I might now have (such as the hand I do have). I believe his range probably contains enough bluffs or semi bluffs to call here. I have decided that if the river does brick out and he follows through with a triple barrel then his range is extremely polarised to trips or better. It would be hard (but not impossible to triple barrel AA here for value).
I call.
8325 in the pot.
The river is the 6c for a board of Qh9h2h9s6c. The villain bets 5025.
I call.
Thoughts?

pre fine, definitely think we can also 3b for value but lower variance/more conservative approach fine at this depth w/o reads IMO

flop good

turn good

riv is really spew, the likelihood of him trying to triple barrel bluff a random on this run-out is extremely low

Thanks for answering Ralph.

I need him to be bluffing ~38% of the time so it's probably bad.

I just couldn't see him 3 barrelling anything worse than trips for value; but I guess that's still not enough justification for the call.

Flatting is good, still a lot of bad players behind that you're happy to have in the pot.
Calling the flop is the best play by far, we have a lot of showdown value.
I also like calling the turn.

I fold the river, I disagree with it being that hard for him to triple barrel AA here. I even think he can have AQ a ton of the time. I would be happy to bet/fold AQ in his spot. He is new to the table and doesn't have any reason to believe that you won't herocall him with worse. Previous to the river I think your reasoning is very good, but I think he only bluffs here a smallish % of the time with the bare Ah. On this board it looks very much like you have a queen after you called the turn.

3bet pre vs someone who opens ton

Fold turn w/o better idea on his postflop tendencies at least bc you block a lot of his bluffs

as played calldown on blank river
Its really bad to call turn and fold river

his bluffing range is significantly wider on turn than on the river

Ya I agree with this too OP. Don't think you should assume he doesn't v-bet on the end, especially AA/KK/AQ. The problem for V with checking riv w/AA e.g. is you can bomb riv when checked to with a nicely balanced range of mostly value but also some bluffs like JT and XhXx gutshots, and he really can't c/c a bet on this run-out since it's highly doubtful you would v-bet Qx on the end.

As V in that spot I'd rather block bet b/f AA for like ~3.5k and hope to get looked up by KQ than allow a live random to check back Qx on this board or to bluff us off our hand.

he still can bluff otr all his turn semi-bluffs/bluffs.

I haven't checked this thread in a while and thanks for all the replies. I called the river because I'm a pay-off wizard and he had Tc9c for trips.