Playing $1/2 live. Room is a loose, sticky game in general. I've been at table for 2 orbits. Overall table is tight, mostly old man tight. I'm a reg, have seen the villain only once or twice and don't remember anything noteworthy about him.

Villain: ~$700 deep. I don't think he's a donkey or a pro. I believe he matches the room, not crazy but not great.

Hero: -$340 deep. New to table. Most table believes I'm loose, don't know if villain knows me, but probably not.

Villain open limps from EP for $2 (lots of open limping at this table). Folds to button who calls. Hero has AdAh in SB. Makes it $15 (standard range preflop w/ two limpers). Only Villain calls.

Pot: $30
Flop: KcJh4d

Hero bets $21, Villain calls

I have Villain on any 2 broadway cards, AK is discounted a bit because I have blockers, KJ is a very real possibility. AQ or A10 are both well in play. KK should have reraised pre, could have JJ but not my read, 44 maybe and there should be no A4 as I have Ad.

Pot: $71
Turn: 4s completing rainbow

Hero?

Excellent turncard, we now also beat KJ if he happend to outflopped us and just called our flop bet with top two. Fire again, not too big in order to keep his continuerange as wide as possible here. Big parts of his continuerange is drawing very slim here, so this is what i consider a fat value spot for us.

Around 40$-45$ sounds good right off the bat.

So this is exactly my thinking. I just caught KJ, and if he thinks I'm on AK (very reasonable) then he thinks he's driving the bus to value town when really he's a passenger.

Hero bets $42, Villain calls.

Pot $155

River: 3

Hero ?

$125/call

So this is the street I really want to get thoughts on my line. I consider 3 different amounts:

1). Value-over bet, I have $275 or so left, pot is $155. I could bet $200 - $275, trying to rep a missed AQ, QQ or AJ. I've been getting called on over bets earlier in hands but not much on 4th or 5th street lately. So I pass on this.

2). Standard bet - $110-140 or so. Rep the hand I have. Not much to think about, I should be good and there are a lot of hands that pay me. Probably the right decision but looks really strong based on total hand action.

3). Smallish bet ~$75 (1/2 PSB). Some value but attempts to look like a blocker if I have AK v KJ and may cause reraise in that scenario. Also weak enough that QQ, AJ KQ something like that may call. And maybe AQ or one of the above hands gets spewy and thinks there enough FE to go after the pot. I choose option 3 (bet $75) and will absolutely call a RRAI.

Thoughts? Am I getting max EV here? Any thoughts are appreciated.

Yeah i mean, option number 3 sounds pretty good to me. After all you just a have 1 one pair hand, and i would try and target a wide range as possible on this river. If you do manage to get three streets of value with a 1 pair hand, thats a good result as anything imo.

A mistake some players would make here is that they bet too big on the river, so that you infact folds out alot of hands that you do beat and want a call from- and often only getting called by better. Its easy to narrow down your opponents callingrange too much if you fire out too big, especially the overbet type of thing i believe is not optimal here.

We actually have the nut two pair hand, AA/44. Since it's incredibly unlikely that villain has quad 4's here we should be targeting his value range KJ/AK/KQ and praying that he slow played KJ. If he has QT he is folding his missed straight draw regardless, so target the most likely hands he has and give him something to think about. The only hand he might reasonably consider folding to $125 is KQ, and given this is 1/2 he'll probably sigh call it off anyway just to see the winning hand.

"sigh call" & "I knew that's what you had" are the most common act & statement made on the River in 1/2 & 1/3.

Calling off their last $125 late in the session with 1 pair when on their last buy-in, is also very common, as they don't want to be bothered going to the cashier's cage.

This.

Time for some fat value.

I appreciate the input everyone. So hero bets $75 on the river and villain flat calls the $75 and rolls over A4o. Turns out I drove myself to value town. I wasn't upset at the time, I figured donkeys do donkey things. This hand was 3 days ago and the more I thought about I wanted to make sure I was't the fish who overvalues AA and can't get away from it. Is there any street the way the hand was played that I should have slowed down? I had many hands he'd call behind with on 3 streets that I beat. I value bet a guy with a 4 outer and he hit. Just want to make sure there aren't holes in my line before I write this off as an oddly played cooler. Thanks.

Hand was fine, though I would have still bet more on the river. Villain is a moron however as he could have had your stack. Like why make a terrible call to hit trips and then not even bother extracting max value. Fish logic is a foreign language to me.

We dont want to "just pick it up on the flop" with AA though. We _want_ players in there with inferior weak ranges. We want them to call multiple streets and we _want_ them to keep fishing for that 2 outer, 3 outer, 5 outer or whatever. Thats how we print money long term.

Sure once in a while they suckout on us, like in this particular hand for instance. That doesent mean hero did anything wrong. Resultsoriented thinking is like venom to our game. Variance in poker dictates that we are indeed gonna be sucked out on in fat value spots like this. And that time can just as likely be _this_ time, or tomorrow as of 1 or 2 weeks ahead.

Speaking of resultsoriented thinking, so often i hear guys in my games getting it allin as a massive favourite, like KK allin pre against 99 who spikes a lucky 2 outer. They are obsessed with "maybe i should have just overshipped 4 bet pre so maybe he folds" or if the 2 outer come on the river like "next time i am gonna overship the turn so he folds". Like jesus christ! What they dont grasp is that they _should_ get sucked out on from time to time. Nothing you can or should do to avoid variance to do its thing. Like should you NOT get AA allin pre against QQ cause the queens might hit a set this particular time and youre afraid to lose your money? Like Johnny says,fish logic is so not understandable its laughable sometimes.

Conclusion: hero played the hand perfectly fine and just got unlucky- he got freaking A4 off to call pre and call flop drawing to 2 cards in the deck when he had AA. Well done OP, you will print money with this +EV line in the future.