Reads: Young mid 20s or so LAG. Pretty loose in raising pre flop and is capable of bluffing. He once flatted my HJ+1 open with QJs, to my immediate left, and bet a A 8 7 flop with no pair, no draw, 3-way.

A few limpers and I limp on the button with 85. Villain completes the SB. BB checks. I'm more than $250 deep against villain.

Flop: Q107. Villain bets $15 into $15. UTG calls and I call.

Turn: Q1075. Villain bets $40 into $45. UTG folds and I call.

River: Q1075A. Villain checks. Hero?

His line here looks a lot like Qx. Our line looks a lot like a draw, and LAGs at low stakes are very often stationy. Generally, unless V has shown he's capable of making decent folds, I'm avoiding bluffing here when the main draw (flush-draw) missed. Although AsXs is now ahead of his Qx, if we bet small he will often call because 'pot odds', and if we bomb he will often call because 'you wouldn't bet that much with an A'. As such I check behind and expect to lose most of the time.

However, if you know your opponent here well enough...

If V had shown that he was a competent LAG, and not a LAG-station (far more common), then we can seriously consider bluffing here. Although the flush-draw missed, the good thing for us here is that one of the main draws (KJ) came in, and Axss caught up as well. Whilst a large bet makes it hard for us to credibly represent AsXs, KJ should be a large part of our range here. V's hand should be mostly AsXs or Qx type hands (with some Qx two pairs as well). A bet of $120 or more should fold out pretty much all his one-pair hands, since if he holds AsXs he blocks our FD combos and will realise he has to fold. We also represent A7ss and A5ss fairly credibly, so even his Qx two-pair combos he would be folding a non-zero amount of the time. V should almost never have aces-up here, with A7ss being the only combo of it for him to hold, since AQ raises pre, and AT probably doesn't bomb turn.

Oh, and if V is good enough to pay attention to live tells, I hope you didn't snap call turn; otherwise he should be calling a bet on this river with any Qx+. This is because it would mean the 5 helped your hand, leaving only A5ss as your value hand, and 68ss, 46ss, 56ss, 45ss as our bluffs.

This doesn't really look like a good situation for a bluff to me. There are just so many draws you could be on here that missed that villain is probably going to call a lot. KJ got there and an AX draw hit the river, but J9 and 98 missed and the list of spade draws is huge, there are lots of gut shot spade draws and pair + spade draws. There is a decent chance villain checked river for a combination of pot control and to try and induce a bluff. Plus, your hand does have some small showdown value. If villain was betting a draw and gave up on river you might win anyways.

There is also the subtle but significant problem of sizing here. Without some history with villain it is really hard to judge what size of bet is best here. Will villain station off vs a big bet? Will they ever fold to a small bet on this board?

I don't think the river bluff does any good. He's a 20s something LAG who probably isn't going to fold to your river bluff. He's probably got TPTK/TPGK. I know you are trying to rep the A (or maybe broadway), but it looks more like what it is: a busted flush draw.

^^^ And yeah, a small bet will get called for pot odds, and a big bet looks like a bluff.

Results: I checked behind. He had Q2 to win.

I figured I had enough showdown value to win, since I beat some missed flush draws, 98 and J9. And my call was probably slightly profitable on the turn with 14 outs...in other words, if I'm getting the right price on the turn I can call with a plan of giving up if I completely miss.

Curious re: your thoughts preflop.

For the sake of discussion, I'll cite Maddog2030's research, which showed that "flopping sexy" with a suited two-gapper is 18%; with Axs, 17%. Which surprised the crap out of me.

So I'm down with playing it from the button, just wondering if raising it wouldn't have been the thing? Seems like you're giving away a lot of information by over-limping.

If there is an argument for raising 85s over limpers at 1/2, it probably doesn't involve not giving away information about our hand. If we're over-limping 85s here, then our over-limping range is probably a decent amount wider than our raising range here. Additionally, 1/2 villains simply aren't paying much attention to 'ranges', and will still most likely be playing their own two cards, except more likely to stack off with TPMK since AK is less likely to be out there in their minds. If the table has enough players who we need to balance our ranges against, then we should probably just table change.

Raising 85s depends upon stack sizes, whether the limpers limp/fold or limp/call more often, and how fit/fold the limp-calling types are.

That said, although we flop 'sexy' with 85s slightly more often than AXs, 85s is a hand I'm more likely to want to fold pre here since our good flops have a lot more bad turns/rivers than those for AXs (counter-feiting 2P, 4th of our suit). Additionally, our good flops often carry some significant RIO, since our 2P hands are rarely top two (and almost never top two by the river), we're always on the ass-end of flush/flush, and if we flop a straight, T8 is very easily in live limping ranges.

I would have raised the turn. When facing a raise on the turn players should re-evaluate all one pair hands. Which means that a lot of times we will get players to fold out better hands and when they do call we have several ways to improve.

I am sure in this instance it would have worked but against better kickers it might not of done. But I think we win a lot more by raising the turn in this situation.

You can honestly rep nothing and he would snap if he's any good at poker, so good check behind.