I have ~$350; Villain covers.

Villain is a regular; white male around 30. He is a solid player; very active, but not what I would consider a full-blown LAG. I peg him as someone capable of making both big folds and big calls.

Villain and one other regular have come to the table within the past hour and totally altered the dynamics of the game. With two fewer nits in the mix, they have pumped up the action by jousting with each other while also playing back at the rest of us.

Villain probably views me as competent, and probably on the tighter side, based on our limited interactions.

Villain opens to 8 in EP, I call in MP with JT, two other callers.
Flop (35): T-9-9
Villain bets 15, I raise to 40, other fold, Villain calls.
Turn (115): 7
Villain checks, I bet 75, Villain calls.
River (265): A
Villain checks, I ???

Any helpful input is appreciated.

Unless you've seen villain go nuts from EP, then I'd assume that villain's range is incredibly narrow PF. In this spot, I either call with some sort of fairly specific postflop plan, 3b small, or fold. Flatting with the plan to play TPMK like the top of our range seems bade.

As played, villain's hand looks a helluva lot like overpairs, so we are badly value cutting ourselves by betting this turn.

As played, all the draws have missed, and while an overcard to his overpairs has hit, it's an obvious bluff card and he has some combos of Ax himself. That said, it's not a totally terrible bluff card, we have officially lost all of our SDV, there are very few hands in my range that I bluff this card with, we have the nut blocker with a hand combo I just about never have in my range, so it can't really be bad to consummate our transformation from marginal value to pure bluff and shove here.

Again, all that is predicated on the fact that he is not balls crazy from EP, and if he is, we need to change our notes from "solid" and "not LAG," to "LAG" and/or "positionally unaware."

Rip it in. His range reaks of JJ+ and flush draws. He could have 99/TT/AA. I think the pot is big enough and the A a good enough card to justify shoving.

^^^

not sure if you meant to type something else but he could have 99/TT/AA so why shovel chips in?

tbh this might not be the best play but I think i check it back here. I don't know what worse hands cause on the river

other then that the hand is played well IMO.

I was just pointing out that there are still some monsters in his range, but way fewer combos than of hands we can get to fold.

I think if you check this back you will lose a lot to hands you could have convinced to fold.

Not sure what you mean by this. Are you referring to TT being less likely since I hold JT?

Yes. In other words, if there's any hand we're going to bluff here, this should be the hand because there is no other hand we could possibly hold that reduces the chances of villain having a calling hand than this one does.

9x / Ax obviously might block some combos, but those hands have a lot of SD value, so we're either going to check back or value bet with that holding.

Why are we raising this flop?

Yeah, I didn't point it out but I think this was pretty bad. This seems like a pretty standard call/eval spot. But since we've gone down this path of over-repping our hand and turning it into a bluff, might as well finish the job.

Seemed like a pretty weak bet; thought I probably had a better hand than Villain; wanted to be heads-up if it got to the turn.

Hate the flop raise. As played, I think going for value here is pretty thin. You're never getting called by worse. You have showdown value. Check it back.

What do you think is villain's pf range?

Against what? KQcc, QJs, 87s and 88 all seem extremely stationy from described villain. I mean, I'm hardly gonna fight to the death that we should bluff here, but I'm just wondering what range you're putting villain on.

So villain folds KK and QQ here? I am not convinced. maybe Q10 and k 10 and thats about it. im checkin. he calls with all 9s aa tt and a10. if its not a draw I think he calls too many made hands.

He doesn't have 9x (other than T9s) if our reads are right. He doesn't have AT. AA/TT/99/T9s combine for 7 combos (some of which he'll raise some of the time at some point), and there are 15 combos that will consider folding. He'll have to fold 2nd pair 67% of the time for a bluff shove to be good here.

We can quibble all day about what the exact fold percentage will be with overpairs, but it's ultimately such a deep leveling war that we can never say for sure. What we do know is that--so long as we don't barrel busted club draws here--our range is going to be overwhelmingly value-heavy when we bet here, so unless he's leaking a ton of money to our value hands in this spot, we can profit off a bluff with this specific hand.

When in doubt, play unexploitably, and let villain make whatever mistakes they may.

But that's not the most important part of the hand. Only flat PF if you have plan. Don't raise this flop.

So you don't know if you're bluffing or not on the river? What kind of range do you think villain gets there with? What worse hands will he call with?

I think the flop raise is somewhere from meh to awful depending on the players left to act and how good your read on villain really is. Once you spew your way to the river like this it's a good bluff spot.

I think it's pretty clear that a river bet would not be for value.

My plan was to flop Q-9-8, but it didn't work out, so I had to improvise.

No, I wasn't referring to the river with my thread title. If I bet the river, it's a bluff.

I was thinking about the flop and turn, where I think there's a good chance I have the best hand, but I'm not sure.

Maybe flush draws. 9x. Overpairs. Possibly AT. I guess he could be slowplaying TT or T9.

I want to know what you did. Personally, I don't bet here because of your respect for the villian. He very well could have connected on that river with a drawing hand. I check and go to showdown. No reason to risk all our chips here. The line you played is marginal at best. I think he calls a shove with JJ or better. I check and see his hand

I checked, essentially giving up, and fully expecting to lose to an overpair (KK-JJ) or something.

The ace just seemed like too obvious of a bluff card for a thinking player, and I didn't want to get hero-called for my entire stack, thereby completing the blast-off of 175 big blinds.

Villain showed K8 and began lamenting the fact that he didn't check-shove the turn.

Lol wow our reads were so bad. Villain is now flagged as a bad wannabe TAG/LAG.

Agree

Grunch

Betting river is spew. He has AcXc which a lot of you are forgetting.

Check back river. Flop raise is thin with JT and probably shouldn't be done.