Blinds $1-$2, but game is $2-$100 spread-limit, where the most you can raise is $100 over the previous bet.

Weekday afternoon. Villain is a Pisces who just sat down with a $200 stack (max buy-in is $300). I cover.

HAND: Couple limps, Villain raises to $12 in the HJ, I 3-bet to $36 with AcJd, folds back to Villain who calls.

FLOP: AhTh5s (pot: $75, heads-up). He checks, I check with no real backdoor equity.

Turn: AhTh5s 2d (pot: $75) Villain bets $16, I just call (Way Ahead/Way Behind)

River: AhTh5s 2d 5c (pot: $107)

He bets $40. I call.

Anything you do different?

I think you played it fine. Flop is mainly a small bet like 20% pot to 33% pot. Flop is close to a range bet, but you could have some checks. KK can do a decent amount of checking, but can also bet small as well. If you are going to have checks, they are more with even weaker aces and also AA which is good enough to protect your checking range. Equilibrium might be 30% checking with your hand on the flop.

I think turn and river are fine. I wouldn't rule out AQ which is 8 combos, and there are only 2 possible combos of each worse suited ace. A9s, A8s, A7s, A6s would make 8 combos, but do we know he calls all those hands pre? Do we know he will call a max raise here? And even if we did know that, we are only breaking even, beating half the hands that call and losing to half. We would probably need to strongly rule out AQ for us to raise here, IE assume he bets larger with AQ. Otherwise we are risking getting called more by better than worse.

It's nice to have decent hands in your flop checking line to call 2 streets on turn and river. But at the same time you would want to bet flop a ton with flush draws, BDFDs and KQ, KJ, QJ, so it's important we have plenty of actual value hands betting the flop too.

Say if we check flop 1/3 of the time with AJ and after betting flop 1/3 we check turn 1/3 of time with AJ, mainly checking back rivers after betting half pot on turn. That still gets us playing a right sized pot for our hand, gets a little more value vs weaker AX than you did this hand assuming you won. This also helps make sure we have enough value hands in our flop check line, our bet, bet line, and our bet, check line (to help us call rivers after checking turn).

Backdoors shouldn't really play a huge role with AJ on this board. The fact is you have a decent value hand mainly worth betting on the flop.

Played fine

i don't think you're way ahead / way behind when he bets 20% ott. to me that looks like a depolar size given stacks and the fd on the board, and theres alot of hands w reasonable amount of equity vs u (as opposed to a board like a22r or something. if you were going to x flop i think id end up raising turn vs this sizing but i mostly dont think you want to be checking flop that often at this spr (the hand is much more similar to like a 40bb sim). you could raise river given his sizing over both streets if you wanted

if the idea is to tread cautiously vs water signs and play more aggressively vs others then i totally get it

Wp

At an SPR of just over 2 on an A-T-5 two tone IP with AJ no tone, I'm playing for stacks.

Pre - fine, I like round numbers better, I hate people that raise to 32 or 71 or some dumb thing..just make it 40.

Flop - fine if he has a check/raising range. Depends on Pisces traits. I expect our cbets to get floated a lot at this level so I'm in value village but with SPR so low we can gii on turn+river.

Turn - Yea I'm raising here all day. This isn't WAWB. His heart draws just went down in equity, he has TX and weaker AX all day. PPs like 77-99. Especially for this sizing. It smells like JT trying to set a price. Make it 70.

I don't see any FPS here, 3betting pre was standard. However I'm betting the flop instead of going into c/c mode while in position and giving him total control over the pot sizing. I would be cbetting around 35 otf then around 65 ott and snap checking back the river if he called.

In typical low stakes games I play, I don't see enough people making moves on the river to warrant raising here. There's very few hands we beat that will call a raise. A9 maybe. KT possibly. There more combos we lose to AT/AQ/AKo possibly. If the game were more bluffy where you see people bluffing in your spot on the river frequently you would get a larger range to call.

I vote WP (at least river). I probably would have played differently raising turn and either betting or c-back river.

Ehh, a few things.

3! might be a little large. Larger raise sizings aren't nearly as relevant in spread limit as NL since the pot can't grow as large without a lot of effort from both players and max bet stays at 100 so fold equity will never be as high as bigger bets.

Villain is all ready opening 6x bb - in a deep-stacked NL game hero will often multiply by another 3.5-5x (21-30 bb total) when he raises: in a game like this 2.4-2.8x might be more cost-efficient and also more advantageous for planning pot sizes for future streets.

As played, I think hero should generally cbet the flop and raise the turn. River call is fine but raise is also reasonable.

RESULT
He shows me 99 and My Hand Is Good.

So, was his $40 River bet a…bluff? Light value? Blocking bet? Come on, it was NONE of those things! He bet $40 because he thought pocket 9s was a $40 hand on that board!

should have given him the option to decide if it was a 110$ hand

I did it before, with a raise to $150 with TT on a 732J6r runout in response to a tiny $50 donk bet. But that was a different kinda board…I kinda think it’s impossible to get hero-called on ace-high runouts in 3-bet pots (and of course it was very possible I was beat here—I think he does the same with AQ.)

Shows you what his 3-bet calling range is OOP. KT, QJ, AT, 99..in other words a lot of hands you beat on this board that could have gone thin.

Fancy play? Maybe the slow-play on the flop, by checking back instead of c-betting. I don't like giving up the betting lead here, in position, with a reasonably strong top-pair hand. Most opponents at these stakes aren't folding any pocket pair or 1P hand to a reasonably-sized flop c-bet.

I don't mind the 3x 3B sizing pre, when you still have the blinds and limpers to get through. I might even go bigger.

If we check-back on flop, I hink I raise turn. V bets $16 into $75 on a board with some straight/flush draw potential. Looks to me like he's trying to set his price to make his draw, or betting a weak 1P hand, to "see where he's at". Since you checked back on flop, it's more likely he'll call the turn raise.

If you bet flop or check-back and raise turn, he'll likely check river. This is a good run-out, because all the draws bricked. You can bet 2/3 pot and get looked up pretty wide.