$1000 deep, villain is loose, thinking, aggressive player who is probably a losing player. Seems to think a lot about what hands are represented and hates to fold when given decent odds.

I open in LP to $20 with AQ villain calls from BB, heads up
Flop: Q63 ($40)
He checks, I bet $25, he calls
Turn: J ($90)
he checks, I bet $75, he calls
River: 9 ($240)
He checks, I bet $180, he makes it $500

river check raises are either nutted or air. most of the times nutted.

more importantly, why did you bet the river and put yourself in this position?

as played, unless you have a dead on read, muck it.

Think this one is a fold. It's annoying because he reps pretty thin, but your hand looks strong from your sizing. In fact, it's probably a bit over-represented. For all he knows, you could have QQ here, or JJ, or 66, or 33, or AA, or QJ, or KT. So I'm OK to let this go.

I like the river bet, especially with the Ace of spades in our hand. We can credibly rep a busted draw here.

River is an easy fold after we get raised, especially when we block a lot of his bluffing range.

It's very unlikely his opponent is strong here given his line. Try to come up with x/r hands for him. Most of them are Q9, with a sprinkling of other combos.

Usually top pair is not worth three streets of value unless our Villains are sticky.

Doesn't sound like this one is.

Don't see how he is ever bluffing against your line with this board

I think river value might be a bit thin. Nice value OTT, so I'd check back river. As played, fold after repping a strong line.

Here's a mantra I like to repeat when I'm getting raised a lot: "They are not playing back at me. They are not playing back at me. They are not..."

huh?

KT

That's a sprinkling of ONE combo. Actually less than one, since he might play that with a flop or turn x/r.

Edit: Oh, I see what you're thinking. When I say "it's very unlikely his opponent is strong here given his line", I was quoting your post about whether to value bet the river or not, so I'm talking about the opponent's line up to that point, ie check call twice then check. At that point it's very unlikely the opponent has a x/r hand. The only things he can have to x/r with are Q9, KTss, T8ss, starting to struggle to come up with anything else.

Not a good runout for firing three streets of value. What are you targeting, KQ/QTs only?

If so, you need to size wayyyyyyyyy down OTR. But I think checking is best.

AP, ez fold.

wp, now fold.

Fold as played, river checkback is fairly standard

Yup. And I will add top pair is RARELY worth three streets except versus the stickiest, most passive villains IME. Most often, V either folds to the third shell or you get raised (which at these levels is rarely a bluff). So I don't think these third shells are +EV against 85%+ of the population.

3-barrelling TPTK or TP2K for value can be fine on dry runouts, especially if Hero has a laggy image. It's necessary to balance spots where we want to three barrel bluff on a board favorable to our range.

A good example would be holding AK on K3793. We can get called by lots of lesser Kx there, and are unlikely to be value-owning ourselves except versus 77 or 99. Perfect spot for three streets.

The spot in the OP is most certainly NOT one of those situations. And the sizing is atrocious based on the few combos we are targeting for value.

This. Fold now though I think. I can't make my mind up on the initial river bet. I actually don't think its that bad of a runout because the only holdings that V should have that would improve based on his calling the flop bet are QJ/JJ/Q9 (and it's iffy if Q9 makes it to the river). No straights makes sense and flopped sets are taking a huge risk by not leading out the river as hero could easily check behind. I'm actually thinking I like the size of the river bet as well to make it look bluffy and get hero calls from KQ/QT/perhaps even worse.

Against a lot of "loose" players from BB, I wouldn't say we're targeting only a few combos. I'd expect to see villains show up with hands like Q5s and if I have a significantly aggro/bluffy image, I'm also hoping to get hero calls from hands like JTss.

It is really tricky, though, if villain is capable of river bluffs here, and if he can take this line with hands like flopped sets and QJ, has 8Tss, KTss, and maybe even some weird KThh floats and such.

Anyway, I don't think the river bet is terrible. But we are near the bottom of our value-range. We should also have KK-AA, possibly all sets except 99, some KT hands, etc.

When we're raised and we're sitting near the bottom of our value range, we should generally just fold. And even more-so because we don't block much of villain's value-range, but we do block some of villain's bluff range.

Yes, this.

If we're targeting hands like Q5s as well, then I don't see a reason not to size down the river bet. If we put lesser Qx in V's range, then I'm fine with the triple barrel but still not at this sizing.

Hero is not polarized in this river spot, so we shouldn't be betting as if we were.

Call

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If you keep getting bet off your hand on the river and he's a thinking aggro player, depending on how many hands you've played with him, he may have picked up on that. Worth considering.

Certainly the board could easily have connected 2-pair or better with a reasonable player's range of hands on the other hand. What range of hands do you put him on? What do you think he thinks of you?

Spots like this are why we play live. If he looks stiff and barely breathing, the pulse in his neck beating like a drum, you call. Call quickly out of mercy before the unfortunate soul goes into cardiac arrest.

How polar we are is somewhat a function of the looseness of our and our opponent’s ranges. I.e., how many bluffs can we reasonably have here, and how many bluff catchers does the villain have?

If we’re opening fairly light in LP, and barreling with a high enough frequency against a loose player, then I think we could certainly consider ourselves to be polarized here. We just need enough bluffs, and villain needs enough bluff catchers (that is weaker paired hands that can win vs our air).

If we were playing a pretty tight TAG style or simply don’t cbet/double barrel much, then it’s probably hard to have many good bluffs here, and therefore we would want to bet smaller.

Similarly, if villain is fairly tight, then they’re going to have too many strong hands vs weak bluff catchers, and it gets more and more difficult to value bet this spot at all with AQ (and as that starts happening, I think yes, we’d want to begin sizing down).

Also, in a sense, we are betting small. We’re only betting 180 when we could be betting up to 880. Theoretically, it’s probably correct to shove the nuttiest parts of our range (eg KT) and a couple Tx bluffs. I know very few of us here in LLSNL actually overbet rivers with any real frequency, and especially not in a balanced way. But just don’t think that a 3/4 PSB is representative of a max sizing.

In my games the stiff neck pulse pounding often means "holy sxxt I am so excited to make the nuts and scoop a mountain of chips" so YMMV.

Neck pulse is an extremely reliable tell for a good hand. Same with hand shaking.