6 handed .25/50 home game effective stacks 75ish dollars with main villain other villains have decent stack sizes as well around 50 dollars.

V1 (BB): best player at the table by far. He seems to play a good tight aggressive style I have history with him we have played together in this home game many times. He has seen me check aces on the flop but also knows I am capable of firing the river on missed draws. I think he views me as a good thinking player capable of mixing up my play.

Two loose passive players limp to me on the button I look down at Ad5c raise to $3.00. This is definitely an area of my game I can improve on I’m not certain about adjusting my overlimping range from the button, usually I just default to raising all the hands I want to play and adding 1 bb per limper. This hand is on the bottom end of a button open range but I am definitely opening it if it folds to me. However this hand plays pretty poorly multiways which makes a limp behind seem bad here seems like a good spot to raise it up and try to get it heads up against the weaker range of the limpers so that’s what I opt to do.
4 callers

Flop (15$)A K 4 checks to me on the button I ?
I decide to check here to protect my checking range, this is one of the weaker aces I can have here and there are very few draws on such a dry flop that I can risk giving a card to

Turn 9 checks to me I bet 7.50 bb calls saying “did he really check an ace again”

River (30$) 4
Bb checks I bet 20? In the hand I thought he might have an ace but we are always chopping with an ace here because he raises AK preflop and I think he leads A9 on the turn. I considered overbetting but chickened out and ended up betting 20$.

However in hindsight I think he actually leads a lot of aces on the turn and his verbal tells further supports that he is very unlikely to have an ace. Therefore I think a more standard bet is actually correct to get a lot of Kings to call. Curious to hear what you guys think

I bet flop to fold out a couple of players who might hit a card and become ahead of us on the turn.
Also bet flop as we likely have the best holding.
As played I would bet around 15 on the river and hope to get a call as I think we are ahead.

Nice hand. Unless someone hits their set, you don't have to worry about the free card on the flop. You're not folding any aces out and there's a chance if someone has a King, they'll play along on the turn and river.

We aren't going three streets with this hand though are we? So if we bet flop are you betting turn and checking river? Or are you checking the turn after betting flop? My thinking is I have a lot of aces here because I'm the button so I will have plenty of other aces I will want to bet

I'd probably bet turn and check river
Why can't you bet all your aces?

I figure that 5 ways people aren’t calling very light and the board is super dry. I want to have some aces in my check range so when people double barrel turn and river I can call it off but idk maybe I’m a fish. That’s the real decision point in the hand whether checking the flop is a terrible donk play

If vill is the best player at a .25/.5 table I highly doubt he views you as a "thinking player capable of mixing up my play". He views you as a donk. I'm not trying to pick on you, but one of the biggest issues with poker players is self-deception. They assume that their image at the table is how they view themselves, not how others view them. While it's hard to really pin down how Vill views you given hand - the best player at the table at low stakes probably views everyone else as bad.

The flop check is fine at low stakes home games, but don't try argue you're making it for balancing issues. It's an exploitable play to disguise the strength of your hand.

You're not doing this to balance "your checking range". First - how often are Vills just barrelling 2 streets into the pre-flop raiser as bluff on these boards? Second - it's more important to balance your betting range than your checking range here. By checking - you've completely polarized your betting range, which is so much worse than trying to balance a checking range (which is going to go unnoticed by Vills).

I realize that it's a multi-way pot and RIO means that raises and 3 streets of betting suck - so pot controlling at some level is important. However - you have position and slightly better aces aren't going to call flop, and then bet turn and river at this level - since you have very strong aces in your range (esp the range that's calling a river bet). You want to bet this flop to better balance your C-BETTING range and get value from weird kings that might be calling flops (especially in low stakes). You also protect your equity to some degree vs someone turning weird 2 pair/gutterballs etc.

Again, bet this flop and check the turn if you want to pot control (doing so will depend on Vill reads imo).

As played - I think you have to bet the river. You're under-repped and vill can call with all sorts of weird stuff. $20 is fine.

Can see your point maybe id check the flop heads up vs just the good player for these reasons but with more people / bad players in the pot I'd want to be betting

Appreciate the reply I am a newer player and new to the forum. I guess you're right he probably views me as a donk but no one wants to admit they are a donk :P

What are you cbetting here? I'm thinking A10+ Q10 and QJ and I can't really find what else i would like to cbet here. Also why is a polarized cbet so bad its 5 ways so I feel there is less room for bluffing and I'm mostly just cbetting for value.

I am still trying to understand the idea of constructing and balancing ranges for postflop lines so if my understanding is a little off please enlighten me.

If the reason to cbet the weaker aces is to get value from kings then I feel like you have to ask if they are more likely to call two streets with a b/c/b line or a c/b/b line. Yeah I guess you are giving out 5 outs worth of equity but they are gonna get that equity on the river as well if you are checking the turn right?

so on ranges - good for you for thinking about them. Continue to construct them and work on understanding them. This will help you vs good players and to hand read. However, don't over-worry about actually balancing everything - you can and should play exploitably at low-stakes. Learn what it takes to balance ranges but also know that almost all low stakes players are incapable of ranging well so exploitable play to extract max value at that specific instance is likely better. Assume this until proven otherwise.

also good on you for being okay with me saying you were wrong about your image. I'd move beyond that to point out that your image isn't static across the table - different players will have different images of you. Button-clicking players will likely view you as action oriented and lucky when you get thin-value paid off and are able to get there when you call with direct odds. Better players will have more nuanced views - but everyone thinks they're better than they are, and conversely everyone else is worse than they are.

Back to the hand:
I realize it's 4 way - but I still am c-betting TP+, any Q w/ a gutter draw (so a little wider than you mentioned). Depending on table dynamics I can also see firing multiple barrels with just a gutter. People will call you with all sorts of weird stuff so you can get value from worse, and you protect your equity from weird 2-pair/turned gutter type hands. AND you get MUBsy vills who find folds in all types of spots.

On why polarizing your c-bet is bad - I misspoke. From a balance perspective, you don't want to over-weight your c-bet towards nutted hands as you allow Vils to get away too easily in situations when you do flop a big hand and want to go bet/bet/bet.

On your last paragraph - I'm okay with the line of thinking about what's more likely to get 2 streets of value in this instance because this is low stakes poker and as mentioned in a lot of cases extracting value at this point in time is more important than balancing your range. However - don't take this analysis and conflate it with balancing your checking range. If you want to consider balance - it's balancing your betting range so that when you do have 2pr+ here you can get 3 streets of value. Which means betting is the more balanced approach. Again, if you strongly feel that c/b/b gets more value from vill in this instance - I'm okay with it to extract value - but don't think it's more balanced.

I'd also note that OOP checking A5 here for pot control is better since that's a much bigger concern with marginal holdings when we're OOP (yes it makes it harder to get value from nutted hands but the pot control concern starts to outweigh it).