Hero has been at the table for 30 minutes.
Villain is a mid-twenties mexican dude with earbuds in. He has been limping and calling a lot of raises preflop. I had not seen him bet postflop but have seen him call and fold a couple of times. He has not been in any big/actiony pots.
Hero: hero is an early 20s white guy who looks even younger for his age wearing a patagonia fleece. He has been pretty card dead but has taken a few flops down with cbets.

This is a 6-max 1/2 game but with frequent $5 straddles. Max buy in is $300 but half the table is stacked at ~$600. Very hard to take hands down preflop and a limp/call is featured in the majority of hands. Just a deep, splashy 1/2 game. This is at the Rockford Charity Games in Chicago if anyone is familiar... although the games are 6max now b/c of Covid.

$1/2 NL (6 handed)
LJ
HJ
CO
BTN
SB Hero ($300)
BB Villain ($300)

Hero is dealt KT

LJ limps, HJ limps, 2 folds, Hero raises to $17, BB cold calls, everyone else folds.

I raised big because I expected one of the limpers to call pretty often and I thought taking it down/not playing postflop OOP was a good result as well.

Flop ($40) T76
Checks through

Pot controlling 150bb deep oop. I can also see merit to betting because of the immediate value and because he seemed passive postflop so it's unlikely he's the type to find a lot of bluff raises on the flop.

Turn ($40) T76[6]

Hero bets $25, villain calls

I don't think the 6 changes too much in that it's hard to imagine either of us has very much 6x in their range. But it is 1/2.

River: 2

Hero bets $50, villain raises to $150
Hero?

It feels like I should call with this hand because I unblock clubs and his line is suspect/he's repping a narrow value range. But at the same time I haven't seen him take any aggressive actions postflop, 1/2 players generally don't bluff the river enough (and they especially dont bluff-raise the river often enough) and the exact 3x raise is scary as well.

Insta Fold. River Raises are nearly always monsters.

Sure he's going to have the occasional bluff here, but never at a frequency that you can profitably pick them off. Let it go.

Standard sigh fold against a guy who hasn't shown any aggressive tendencies at all while you've been there.

Line looks good if you folded river. Might check/call river sometimes.

Fold ainec. You should just auto fold versus river raises with non nutted hands.

EDIT: Also, I would just complete pre.

Flop I bet 1/3 pot, it's 1/2 and we should just start building a pot when we flop this strong.

I'd go a little larger Ott.

I'd go a little larger on the river; don't x-c.

Snap call

Limp pre
Bet flop

i think hand became harder to play because we checked flop.IMHO
as played sigh muck
not much we beat outside of bluff

I go ahead and bet the flop, but heads up, I can get behind a check.

Turn and river seem fine. I'm tempted to call, but in real life it's probably a fold until you know more about your villain.

Bet flop. There are a lot of scare cards that could hit turn/river. We had better get our 2-3 streets of value now before the board becomes scary. If this were multi-way I could get behind a check, but you have to bet your value heads-up. We’re not inducing a bluff by this player type so flop check has essentially no benefit and only negative consequences for reasons stated above. Also KT is not really intermediate value on this board. It’s a very strong hand when have tagged our opponent as loose and passive, as described. He has lots of worse Tx here.

AP, fold river. He isn’t just deciding to run a bluff with spades all of a sudden on the river. If he’d wanted to bluff spades, he’d have started a bet on the flop. River raises are usually nutted in live poker.

Thank you for the input.

Folding river is definitely the consensus, and I can see why. 1/2 players in general bluff-raise the river way too rarely and we have no reason to think this is not the case here. Villain's range is likely so unbalanced that having good "unblockers" is basically worthless.

There've been a couple suggestions for limping, could you please explain why you think that is optimal here? Is the primary reason that I'm just too likely to get called and have to play OOP? I can definitely see some merit to limping, but why do you prefer that option over attacking the dead money & building a pot for the times we make a strong hand postflop?

As played, I can also definitely see the benefits of c-betting, and I agree it's probably better than checking. He won't bluff raise us enough on the flop and we want to build a pot before the board gets too scary. But what if he calls and the turn is an overcard or completes a draw? That would be an awkward situation, and we're pretty deep and oop.

If we check on the flop, we get to pot control, and he'll never check back a strong hand, so we can make very clear turn decisions. Also, would you c-bet top set here or would you ever check-raise that hand?

I like the hand, could also complete pre, either is fine IMO. Now snap fold.

Sorry for the late response. Re: limping, yeah this hand is on the brink but I'd be raising AQo+, KJs+, ATs+, and 99+. Yes, we're limping because we don't want to play OOP and this hand isn't quite strong enough.

Re:c betting/what to do Ott. It really depends, if you gave examples of specific turn cards it'd be easier to explain.