$2-$5 live full ring
$500 effective

Villain opens to $30 from CO
Hero flats $30 from the button (AsTs)
heads up to flop:
($65)
TcTd5s
Villain bets $50
Hero calls $50
($165) Turn: 2d
Villain bets $120
Hero calls $120
($405)
river: 5c
Villain checks
Hero?

My buddy played this hand and I don't like his river decision but don't want to influence with results or even what he decided on river.

What do should we do on river?

What we know about villain; he is a pretty tight player (tight enough that I actually may have pitched the ATs on the button) villain will open limp a lot of hands and when he raises pre-flop he usually has a strong range.

Villain is pretty sticky post flop but did actually look a little bit disheartened when the board double paired on river.

Villain covers us with a stack of about $800 to start and we have 100bb to start the hand

Suck bet time - holding an A, your buddy shouldn't have bet more than an amount feigning to target AQ+ w a pp.

interesting;
that's what he did.

He bet $95 hoping to get called by most of villains range.

I feel like we have the part of our range that is best at getting max value from the best hands in villains range.

I told him I'd have gone at least $200 and woulda been tempted to just rip it in and hope he couldn't fold an over pair.

Villain called pretty quickly with KK

@Donovan - kind of wish you held of the results for longer than 15 minutes...

I also bet for value and am never betting 1/4 pot here with any of my range. I don't think AQ calls almost anything after trying to double barrel with air and getting called. I expect a hand like AQ/AK to just try a third barrel rather than x/c a small bet on the river.

Just bet for fat value and hope V has an overpair and calls. I prob just jam with what looks like a 3/4 PSB on the river.

$150 imo. even though results confirm he's at the top of his range, hard to imagine anyone competent calling >$200 here

I like the small bet your friend made, I might go like 150 but I doubt a shove gets called enough to be better.

Theory wise this is likely way too much, but I suppose hero could consider a larger riv sizing exploit than usual in this hand given Vs awful flop/turn sizing (unless hero is viewed as a fish/station) as it makes him far more likely to make a bigger ck-c mistake otr (because sizings suggest he's a nitfish)

Generally speaking though, you have no bluffs and mustn't rep polar, so you need select a sizing that appears to be betting worse for value. Somewhere floating around the ether is a perfect riv sizing choice for each specific Tx hero holds.. JT is likely a larger bet than AT, etc

It's just hard to really size bets at this point imo... betting $200 but leaving $100. just seems weird to me...

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I was trying to think of the bluffs we would want to work in to our river betting range and couldn't come up with much aside from some weak made hands turning into bluffs and some pretty sketchy draws that we prob would not actually get here with this way.

So, yeah, because; A) we won't be doing much bluffing and B) villain caps his range pretty significantly when he checks this river we prob shouldn't move in and hope villain not only happens to be at the top of his range but also can't hand read and realize we never have a hand worse than his that jams for value/we don't have many bluffs. I think we should bet a pretty strong but linear range here and since we aren't polarizing we likely do best with a smaller sizing.

Good answer.

I also like the point just made about a bet of $200 leaving $100 behind and it being a tough spot to size our bets properly.
Reality is, any reasonable amount we bet makes us look completely committed to stacking off vs a check raise and, therefor, just looks very strong (this is especially true because we get here with so few hands that we feel a need to bluff with vs a river check).
Maybe betting something like 100 where we can at least appear to have a bet-fold range makes some sense but maybe this little problem of never being able to bet fold with a sizing larger than 100 helps make a case for just jamming. As, honestly, I think I'm going to jam every hand I decide to bet for value in this spot even if I'm near or at the bottom of my value range because I don't want to let villain decide if i put my stack in or not.

Good input guys,
any other thoughts on this?