This was a hand I played a year or so ago, before I stopped playing poker for a while due to work schedule. I'm finally going to go back to 2/5 soon and figured I'd post an HH.

2/5, V and myself both about 1200 eff, V is young and seems serious.

A3hh on CO. I think V was in BB, although he may have limped UTG. In any case I raise to 20, button calls, blinds call. (~80)

Flop 754hhh. Checked to me, I bet 30, only V calls. (~140)

Turn 5x. V donks for 75. I think about it and raise small to 200 hoping he has what he is repping (a 5). I am also a bit concerned about 75/54, but mostly don't think he's very strong here, a low flush would have raised flop for protection and so would a straight. He calls. (~540)

River a blank (9x?) I bet half pot again targeting a 5 and he calls with K9hh.

After the hand villain insisted I should have raised massive on the turn and could have stacked him by the river. I felt it was difficult for me to get paid by worse besides his exact hand. Is that 1/2 nitreg thinking?

Turn seems reasonable. You could go a little bigger, but I would not go crazy.

River I think 85% pot or 150% pot both seem reasonable.

When you have a high card and low card like Ah3h, you unblock all the other strong flushes, so we have a hand that likes to size up more than if we had say, AhKh, AhQh.

On the other hand, when the board is paired, I want to put more of my flushes in the 85% pot line and my boats will mainly be in the overbet line. But generally speaking I think Ah3h would make it in the overbet line because of the high card low card properties.

Whether V was in the blinds or limped UTG matters, at least a little. The BB is going to show up with more boats than a UTG limper, typically.

A boat isn't likely to donk lead and flat call your turn raise, and then go for a check raise on a three flush board, though, so based on the turn action, if he was in the BB, your line seems fine, targeting trip 5's and low flushes for value.

Even if he limped UTG, I wouldn't necessarily put him on KXs, nor think he's going to pay off a huge raise with a worse flush when he donks. A lot of his KXs wouldn't limp pre, and he might be good enough to fold the second nut flush on a paired board.

I actually like your turn raise size. It's small enough to get called by worse flushes and trips.

Some players will try to get inside your head by saying you misplayed your hand. I think you played it fine.

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I think it was played fine. Maybe vs. this exact V you could have gotten his stack, but that's his mistake, not yours.

What I see as a problem is the half-pot river bet. We're betting for value here; why not use a reasonable size? 2/3x at the very least.

Half-pot is the size used by people who don't think about bet sizing. If you dropped it from your bet sizes, you would not be giving up very much at all.

Is that for all streets, Alan? If so, you prefer a more polar set of betting choices, like, check or 1/4-1/3 pot OR 80%-125+%?

Interesting way of thinking about it. I'd beem betting 1/2 pot because, "That's the way it's been done." (Insert odds discussion that sometimes applied, mostly didn't.)

Re - the river bet sizing...

It's a weird spot, with the OOP V limping in or flatting from the BB/EP, check-calling the monotone flop, donking 1/2 pot on turn when the board pairs, then just flat calling hero's less than 3x raise, and finally checks to us again on the river.

Was he trying to induce a raise from hero's worse flushes, by repping trips? Are we supposed to think he flopped a flush, or he turned trips or a boat? If he thought he was raising for value and to build a pot, why not 3B over hero's smallish raise? Why not donk-lead huge on the river?

His line doesn't make a ton of sense. So I can see sizing down when V checks to us on the river. We don't want to bet huge and have V fold all his trips, straights, and lower flushes, and check-jam his boats.

Easy shove on flop

$1,200 deep. LOL. This would be an excellent way to lose value (unless you know your V's exact holding).

Read villain better. Easy shove.

LOL. Your advice in almost every thread is shove -- this one you are correct once you know V's hand. Easy game.

Please stop trolling in every thread and while you're at it, stop liking your own posts. You know what, maybe do everyone a favor and just stop posting altogether. Thank you.

To be fair, jamming flop alleviates us from having to figure out our river bet sizing.

Just sayin'...

I didn't think about the unblock properties at all, that's helpful, thank you

Taking a break from our donking argument to appreciate this lovely meme