1/2 home game. Main villain and I have lots of history, mostly with me having it on the river in big pots. I've 3 bet him a few times this session and he's folded each time. My image is likely competent and definitely one of the better players in the player pool. He's very solid and is able to get away from pretty big hands. He's also prone to check down hands when he thinks he's best and rarely goes for thin value.

We are 8 handed and stacks are $450 effective.

I open 98 UTG to $8. This is towards the bottom of my opening range, but I'm leery of limp-calling here.

UTG+1 (fish) calls.
V raises to $32.
I call, fish folds. At this point I think V is mostly TT+/AJs+ with some suited connectors thrown in. I haven't seen him 3! with mid or small pairs. This sizing is a little large for him, even with a bet and call in front.

Flop ($75) AAK

I'm pretty done with this hand, and although I would reraise him on a lot of paired boards, I'm planning to check fold this one.

I check
V checks behind

Turn ($75) 3

Now that I picked up some equity, I decide to bet, hoping to fold out any underpairs and maybe some KQ combinations which got frisky preflop. I bet $30, knowing I can fold to a raise. He casually calls.

River ($135) J

Bink. Yay. I feel like after calling a 3 bet and then semi-bluffing the turn, I'm almost obligated to bet here to get some value. I could check and hope to pick off a bluff, but I think he still might have some hands with showdown value like 10s or QQ which will check behind. I bet $80. Given our history, I'm thinking a smaller sizing will look too much like value and he'll get away from it. I've typically gone more like $65 in pots this size.

He tanks for 45 seconds and raises to $250. I'm really surprised to get raises here. My general feeling is that nobody raises river in a 1/2 home game as a bluff. Not in a $20 pot and certainly not in a $400+ pot.

I mean, I'm never, ever good here, right?

Pre is horrible both times

Turn bet too small

River is easy fold. He had a boat. We have better bluff catchers anyway.

I'm really not a fan of pf. Firstly, opening sc like this is usually burning money for obvious reasons. I think people abuse this type of play, not really knowing its intent, which primarily is to balance our range so people are more likely to call or raise when we create the action in EP with premiums. This really applies to a table full of competent players who know we usually open ~5% from UTG/UTG+1. After we are re-raised, the best move is to fold, followed by a significantly less optimal, but possible 4bet. Calling is just printing money for the opposition. I mean, if you were V, what would you want 98 suited to do here? It's probably not fold, which is why it's the best option for us. It's really hard to outplay someone OOP.

I'd check/call this river simply to show our holdings. Again, we raise junk in EP so people know it's in our range, making them want to play with us next time when we hopefully have a monster. As played, fold.

Pre: Given lots of history, I'm a little hesitant to assume you don't need to balance your UTG opening range. But, consider the possibility that you might not Definitely fold to the 3b.

Flop: Open shove, ldo. Failing that, I guess c/f is all right.

Turn: The hands you want to fold here are TT-QQ. They're a lot more likely to fold for $50 than $30.

River: Against this V who might check hands like AQ (if it's in his range given his line), I'm fine with the value bet. The raise is a boat 1000% of the time. Easy fold.

Preflop depends how you play the other hands in your UTG range and the frequency at which UTG raises are getting 3! collectively by the field. If prefop 3!'s are fairly rare, than I think 98s is a good hand to have at the bottom of an UTG open range which looks like 99+, AQo+, AJs+, KJs+, 98s+ which is ~7% of possible hands and replaces the numerous RIO offsuit Broadways with the less frequent SC's and SG+1's. This range consists of 36 PP's (99+), 24 offsuit Broadways (AQ+), 20 suited Broadways (AJs+, KJs+) and 16 SC's (QJs-98s). I think this is a very balanced range assuming you aren't going much lower than 98s/AQo, otherwise it becomes too weak and too susceptible to 3!'s. But since you have lots of history with villain I think it is appropriate to have an UTG range that is not exclusively QQ+/AK or something prohibitively tight like that.

It's important to know what position V 3! you from, but since you provided us a range I think that is fine to go off of. If his range really is that tight (ie: he's not 3! AKo, AQo) than that reduces his unpaired combos by 75% and this becomes a turbo-muck unless you expect V to go to the felt with one pair hands like AA/KK/AK. Ignoring the random SC's, TT+/AJs+ is 42 combos (30 PP's and 12 AJs+) and TT+/AJs/AQo+ is 66 combos (30 PP's, 12 AJs+, 24 AQo+). This is huge for us and factors into whether we call or not.

The best case scenario is villain has the TT+/AJs/AQo+ range, overplays overpairs/TPTK and c-bets his air range when he misses (which is >50% of his combos ~2/3 of the time). This gives us something to work with and allows us to play back at villain. We are going to flop a straight draw or a flush draw ~21.5% of the time and a straight or flush ~2% of the time. More dangerous to us is when we flop a "5 out draw" aka a pair ~1/3 of the time. Because it carries too much RIO I'd probably lump pairs into our bluff-raise range but it will depend on the flop and c-bet sizing.

In a situation like this I would be looking to x/c moderate sized flop bets on A-high and K-high flops when we flop a straight draw or flush draw. On low card flops where we flop a straight draw or a flush draw I would be more inclined to x/r (especially if he thinks you the type to open all/most PP's in EP which would then make up a large portion of your open/flat 3! range). And finally I would be looking to bluff x/r all/most flops where we flop a BDSD and BDFD like Q72r, T53r etc.

Now that we've got the theory out of the way, this was an absolute disaster of a flop for us and we should immediately go into x/f mode. When V x's back this flop the alarm bells should already be going off in your head that he is slow playing a monster (or actually has QQ-TT). Since he has 18 combos of PP's (out of 42 (43%) or 66 (27%) total combos) we can bluff him off of, a turn c-bet is fine but I would size it around 2/3 PSB which has a break-even fold requirement of 40% (surprise surprise, that roughly matches his QQ-TT combos based on your provided range). Even if he gets sticky with a couple of those combos we still have ~20% equity to fall back on when called.

That said, you absolutely CANNOT bet the river. Just x/f. You beat 0% of villain's calling range (okay maybe AQ calls) and any bet is just burning money. Hitting a flush is your get out of jail free card vs. sticky QQ-TT, it's not a hand to value bet. Like what bluffs could you possibly have here that you would fire again on the river after villain called the turn? Nothing! So just take the showdown or x/f.

I think you are going in the right direction but still have some work to do regarding bet sizing and when to bet vs. check.

Villain has AK/AA/KK/QQ/JJ.

What are you trying to get value from on river, more importantly, why?

What do you do if you check? Looks like an easy check/fold.

I don't mind the raise pre, but I fold to the 3bet, especially since V will fold big hands.

Turn bet is OK, but should be a little bigger.

River is a check because you have showdown value and you cannot call a raise, at least I wouldn't. I might c/call depending on the size and the "vibe" I get from V, although with your description it's probably c/fold. We don't really beat much in his 3bet range.

Ah yeah, didn't notice how few Ax we gave V based on pre. If he's never 3betting AQo or random Axs, definitely c/f.

Grunching right here. This is exactly what was going through my head as I read. There are always special circumstances that warrant doing things out of the ordinary, but this is like powering a steam engine by shoveling money into it, at every single step.

I would only add I'm torn between c/c within reason or c/f river. (Now that we're there, understanding that we should never have gotten there.) I think it really depends on the value of the river bet and the live read.

OK. I came for a flogging and got what I came for.

Looking back over it, I don't know wat I was expecting to get called by on the river. He has only AQ here which could call a bet. I realize now preflop call stinks, too. If I were to 4 bet pre, what would sizing look like to fold out AK/AQ/QQ? FWIW, he earlier, he opened JJ UTG and folded face up to my 3 bet on the BTN. Would $105 seem about right?