The table is down to just the aggressive regs and one fish nursing his short stack to the bitter end.

7 handed, I'm on the CO and the HJ is raising a good 40% from that spot. The button is the short stacked fish, the blinds are hyper aggressive regs. I've been calling a lot in position to raises and not really folding to 3bets in position as I'm extremely deep and I've only put in 1 3bet in the last 6hours or so because the regs have been so agro and I started the session with a quick double up so I've been kind of too deep to 3bet and willing to just see flops

I cover the table and effective stacks are around 2K ish, except for the short stacked fish on BTN who has about 400 to start the hand

HJ raises to 20, Hero calls with KK, BTN calls, SB calls, BB folds

55T

checks around to the btn who bets 50, everyone calls

9

checks around to the BTN, bets 125, SB folds, HJ, the original raiser makes it 325, hero calls BTN folds

river 8

HJ checks it over to us

should we bet or check?

For me this is a super close spot. If HJ has been opening often I think that I’d lean towards bet, but what the harder question is... can we bet/fold here?
Pot is 1045 and you have 1600-ish left?
I think that I would go around 475-550 and strongly consider folding if shoved on.
I see HJ having JJ, QQ, A-10, AA, 10-9s fairly often here. Maybe the odd A-5/K-5/5x suited? Yuck.
AP it seems like he wanted to iso the short stack button, but became either uncomfortable (or tricky?) once you called behind.
Jeez, tough spot for sure. I think I bet more often than check here though, and feel sick/probably fold if he shoves because so few players at my tables have such a gutsy check-raise river bluff in them. Your hand is underrepped and worse can definitely call. I actually like your line in this hand AP, especially as you’ve just been flatting a lot of hands before this one and not 3!ing much.
This is a legit coin flip spot in my mind and the specific villain tendencies would be my main factor in my decision.

Oh, it's better to just check. You can possibly get thin value here from Tx, but a lot of what you are losing to could be checking to induce, so I think it's better to check.

Oh and raise pre. Makes this hand way easier.

I am curious to hear the results of this hand if discussion isn’t going to continue KT.
What did you opt for?

I checked it back thinking i had gotten max value out of my hand but looking back it's probably not a good check, only hand he has that beats me is QJ which is a stretch for him to have, left a good 50 bb on the table

i think he has to call a smallish bet, and I seriously doubt he's checking anything that beats me so i dislike my check back although it's possibly in hindsight

V: 9To

Yeah, 9-10 was honestly what I thought was very likely here. Surprised it was offsuit though. It definitely seemed like he wanted to iso the short stack and hated your call.
Check back is the safe option here, but I think when I’m on my A game I go for almost a full buyin river bet here and fold to a shove.

Fold the tron

I like leaving the fish in with a flat here. Next level balance going on!

Oy. It's hard for us to have a bluff here, no? I love going for value as much as the next guy but it really looks like we sandbagged a monster at some point.

I don't mind the check back much. If everyone was targeting the fish as much as you say then V still has some monsters here. Our hand is pretty under-rep'd. Why wouldn't V give us a chance to bet our busted diamonds? If we aren't strong enough to bet behind then he isn't getting much value OTR anyways other than from bluffs. I could see some 5x, 99, TT, AA taking this line. All of which have us smashed. How many combos can he check / call with that we beat? T9, JJ, QQ. Seems pretty thin. Also looks fishy when he check raises turn multi way then checks river heads up. Not saying it's 100% check all the time, but this deep I don't think we have to bet all the time either.

To me, the HJ check raise reads like he's happy with his hand vs the short stack BT range and is just trying to isolate him. Board is getting messy and if he doesn't, then you can come along with a good price.

If he had a crazy big hand, he'd just call and let you overcall with draws.

He can't really be check raising draws because he shouldn't expect the short stack to fold very often here (although obviously he can) after putting in half his stack.

So to me, this rates as a made, but not lock hand on the turn and the river shouldn't change that very often. I like a small bet on the river.

+1

This was how I saw things too.
In my read of how things played out V’s most likely holding was exactly what KT said he had above (I just was pretty sure it would be suited).
V checking a made monster (boat or better) to us here on the river is a pretty bad play imo, I would go for fat value here as V with a monster, not a C/R. There’s too many hands that H can have that will pay off, but won’t raise.
10-9 is the most logical hand for V to have here given the way the hand played out. That’s why I like a b/f play here.

So...you 3bet 73s but not KK? You may as well use your image if any of these players know you.

I was pretty surprised he showed up with a ten. It seems like he should have bet the flop with that hand. I thought for sure the BTN would have a ten here, maybe he did, but after he snap folded I'm not so sure. Why he was betting for fat value into a sticky field on a dryish board is beyond me. So T9 was pretty much the last hand I had villain on, it looked like QJ or JJ to me but don't understand the flop check at all, so QJ made a lot more sense to me. I would definitely have bet this flop with T9 with the shortstack button involved, and he raised a weak hand and probably needed to bet for value/protection as there are so many cards that devalue his hand. I just don't know where he was going with this hand