Hello everyone.
Was looking for some feedback on a hand recently played.

Game: 5/10
Players:

CU = Villian #1 (tight aggressive @ 250 BB)
SB = Villian #2 (tight aggressive, raises in position but so far hasn’t fought a pot @ 250 BB)
BB = Hero (tight aggressive, won a few pots recently after outplaying opponent after flop @ 150 BB) (holds 4d, 4h)

Note: Hero has some previous reads on both players. Villain #1 can bluff, but stops bluffing at some point and shuts down. Villian #2 is a solid tight aggressive player, never seen him bluff before. Obviously when he bluffs he does so at the right spots. Has some tattoos and seems like he could be doing this for a living.

Preflop- CU raises 30, SB calls Hero calls

Flop- Kc, 10d, 4s
SB check, Hero checks, CU bets $30
(I was thinking here of raising pot+ but I looked at the board and I think it looked like a relatively dry board, so I decided to slow play. Normally I would raise here about 80% of the time)

Turn- Qc
Sb checks, Hero bet $75, both players call.

River- 8s
SB check, Hero bets 150, CU calls, Sb thinks for a little bit then raises to $575.
Hero thinks for a long time. 1+ minutes, and sees how if SB holds J9 or AJ he would totally check call the turn. Because it’s a safe turn card. And then try and trap the river. And was about to fold. And then hero thought how this would be a perfect place to try and bluff 2 players out of a pot. And hero calls.
CU folds.

Sb Villian shows AJo
CU held QKo

Any constructive criticism or advice would be greatly appreciated!

Flop is mistake, obviously. Any card 9,J,Q,A is gonna kill the action and make it such that you cannot extract full value on later streets.
As for river: Check/call, Check/call, Check/Raise is the most underbluffed line in live poker. Your answer is there.

Thank you for your feedback Chaos.
I agree with everything you said.

I’m curious.
What makes you say:
Check/call, check/call, check/raise is the most underbluffed line in live poker?

Just to clarify about flop: I think calling is reasonable and advisable facing a larger bet heads-up, but, we want to raise 100% facing the 1/3 size CBET with another player in the hand.

I remember that quote from Bart Hanson's CLP material. The idea is that by checking three streets, opponent is saying they have a hand with showdown value (a bluffcatcher or strong value). Put another way, they shouldn't be checking river with a hand that has no showdown value, since they are basically forfeiting the pot. Therefore, in order to take a x/c x/c x/r line, they would need to take a hand with some showdown value (a decent one-pair hand), and turn it into a bluff. This just doesn't happen that often at low, or mid-stakes games.

Bart Hanson is doing a "Live Stakes Exploits" series on his podcast, and covered a related concept this week: Players don't tend to turn one-pair hands into bluffs. On this board, it is not possible for SB to have an unpaired hand, since all of his straight draws either get there or make a pair on the turn.

Of course, that concept might not apply to a strong player in upper mid-stakes. Strong players should be bluffing with JT/QJ on river It's just *less likely* than if the board had run out differently (so they could have unpaired hands), or if they had check raised turn rather than river.

Lastly, you are correct in your assessment that SB might have a higher bluffing frequency due to the fact there is a third player in the hand. But this is really player dependent. This would only apply to certain types of players who like to fight and battle for pots. Other types of players will tighten up a lot in multiway scenarios and their bluffing frequency will decrease.

I just noticed that your sizing across turn/river is quite small. You may have recognized this and felt it increased the chances that SB had a bluff. You may consider sizing up on river to 2/3-3/4 pot (so, like $240) to extract more value from all the two pair combos in the Cutoff's range. This would have also made it easier for you to get away from the hand in the event of a raise. Honestly, though, this is a multiway pot, and we have the 6th nuts, and there's a lot of J9/AJ out there, so betting large is getting a bit thin (AK might call a small bet, but fold to a larger bet.) So I don't necessarily disagree with your river sizing. It just makes the hand a bit harder to play if you think you may have induced a bluff in a typically underbluffed spot. My opinion, and I have no idea if it's correct or not, is to go either smaller or larger on river, since, I think your half-pot sizing is a bit inefficient (AK in CO probably folds to half-pot or larger, and we really want a call from AK when we use that smaller sizing).

Flop: agree with above that c/c vs a larger bet is more reasonable but as it went down better to c/r vs the small bet to $150-200 range. The board has two Broadway cards so you could be playing QJ/Kx this way and get calls from hands that are ahead or drawing vs that perceived range.

I'm confused about the turn, perhaps your opponents read it as a weak TP blocking free cards, and that makes the river a bit more challenging.

Results tend to bias responses, so try to hold back results until there's been some discussion

Advanced stuff Chaos.
I really need to sit down and think about these concepts, and apply at future sessions.
One of my problems as I can see in retrospect, is not thinking ahead enough, nor thinking critically enough. Discounting certain possibilities (when at these lower limits the players are just not that strong) and at the river just giving it all up to that rash decision that Villian could be bluffing.

At the river the reason why I sized the bet at around 35% pot was because I thought I might get two players to call. On the river I felt pretty comfortable that most of the times I would have the best hand. Only possibly losing to AJ/J9 combos (sets would have defined the hand earlier on flop or turn). So I thought CU might have top pair top kicker, perhaps 2 pairs. And Sb potentially playing a similar unpaired King, such as KJ or K9 (of course there is the blocker line that this is unlikely), or Q10. Once he raised, I should have discounted the bluff possibility to the minimum, based on your reply, and folded.
I really really appreciate your feedback- you took me down an alley I’ve never been down before.

Man of means, good point on the premature result posting. Will hold back next post.

My mistake, I miscalculated the river bet because I didn’t count the third player’s $75. Your river bet sizing makes a lot of sense IMO.
Shitty spot OTR given how small you bet, probably comes down to live reads and is a fold against the standard noncreative type of player. Probably a typical member of your player pool is under bluffing this spot and doesn’t overvalue KQ often enough to make this a call, but who knows. Definitely a much easier fold if you’d chosen the larger 2/3 sizing.

Agreed with the betting size OTR.
I think 200+ bet on river I’m much more likely to fold.
And probably would have folded after showing strength.
Oh well live and learn ��

Besides Bart Hanson, who else do you follow?

I like coaches who do live poker hand reviews (versus focus on online poker). I watch the free content by Jonathan Little on Youtube. I think he's a bit more strategically sound than CLP. I would subscribe to his coaching site, but it's a bit pricy at $99 a month. I sub to Bart Hanson's CLP because his site is a bit cheaper at $20 a month, for access to his weekly podcast and hand review segments, and I don't have a lot of time to devote to studying anyway.

I used to play sets in a similar manner as OP did, but no longer do. I have a general rule I apply in a hand: I want the bet to be what I want, not what the other guy wants. Now, checking the flop seems standard, however, I'm expecting a bet larger than the preflop bet (which was 1/3 pot). At a minimum, I want a 1/2 PSB ($45), to a max of 3/4 PSB $65-$70. For this reason, I would c/r the flop. My thinking would be as follows:

Pot $180 after my call amount, so I would add $90-$135 to the $30 call, or make it $120-$165.

Unfortunately, if the CU calls, the BB will probably come along and Hero gets felted. Still, it's what I've learned to do.

Disclaimer: I play deep stacked ($500-$1,000) 1/3 NL.

Imo play 44 and KTs fast on the flop and pair them with Q9 + backdoor, J9 + backdoor, and 56 + backdoor. On turn, continue with all value and pair them with Q9s, all J9's, and 56s.

I agree...players are much less likely to think you have a strong hand when you lead out, or donk here. And if you do check, I think a C/R is mandatory.

Also, by just calling the flop you've given the SB free odds (right term?) to hit his gutshot. I don't like giving players free odds to beat me in NL/PL poker...it's just too pricey too often when it backfires. Like this hand!

As we call it in our home game, slow playing to oblivion...

What do you mean by “pair them” and what do you mean by 56 + backdoor?
Do you mean play my 44s as if that these backdoor options are available to my opponents?

General rule of thumb any time you bet or raise, you should be doing so with both value and a bluff, so this was just an exercise in developing a balanced polar raising range. Take your best made hands and your weaker draws and play them in a similar fashion while making sure you aren't heavily skewed one way or the other. Backdoor refers to the fact that you need both turn and river to hit your draw for your draw to complete, so if Q9s wants to hit a spade flush, it needs both turn and river to be a spade.

That is very interesting!
Thank you.