5/5 NLHE, 6 handed

Table - Banana is on the move and has hit Switzerland. Table is a late night game at the local big casino, only table running on a Monday night, game will break in a couple hours as casino closes. Table is loose passive and very sticky with a few different tendencies between players. Min/max is 250 CHF/1500 CHF and everyone has around 1k CHF. We bought in for 1k and had AKo first hand and scooped a nice pot preflop to win about 250 CHF 4-betting but since then the cards have been awful and we're bleeding down. Hardly a playable hand in two hours. 98s was the best hand we saw. Every open is going 4-5 ways and opens are anywhere from 15 to 60 pre...sometimes 100. Postflop people are donking with TPAnyK, mid-pairs are enough to call off half your stack. People are glued to their hands as well. AA opens 100 pre, gets called by 45os, flop like 987ddd and black AA is betting out and calling a raise and then check-calling turn on a 6os. Please God Almighty give me a hand.

Main V - Loose passive but not as much as the others. Has seen some value hands and is up. Tried to trap checking OOP (or was afraid of FD?) OTR with TT on a Td-5c-3s-Kd-7d runout earlier. Has been seen betting his up/down SDs. Covers. BB.

We have about 800 CHF from the BTN for this hand.

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UTG, MP, CO limp 5, I open A J to 30, SB, BB, UTG, and CO call. 5 ways last to act.

Flop 150 - T 9 8

Checks through

Turn 150 - 4

SB x, Main V bets 30, fold, fold, I call, SB folds.

River 210 - 8

Main V checks.... Hero?

Looks like a check and take the cheap showdown situation. Betting looks very much like throwing good money after bad.
There is some chance hero has the best hand if villain was betting a worse draw on the turn.
Villain likely has a good number of hands that can check/call. Between meh TX/9X/under pairs and some trapping with 8X+ there are a bunch of hands.
Hero's line looks like a draw or a meh hand unless hero hit the river 8, which will be hard to sell.

Check and occasionally win. Not getting much to fold.

This is no-fold-'em-hold-'em. Basically, it's Bingo.

It's interesting that you describe the game as people being glued to their cards, and yet 3 of 4 opponents folded to V's turn bet of only 20% pot. Makes me think we could have taken this down if we c-bet flop and barreled turn.

As played, I guess we check, and laugh our balls off if V turns over 4x.

Seriously, though - for me the takeaway with this hand is to not let our being card-dead cloud our reads on our opponents or how the game is playing. Anyone who folds any 1P or draw on the turn, facing a 20% pot bet from the BB, even on this monotone board, is probably pretty bad, but not nearly as sticky as your initial read on the table dynamic would suggest.

The more I look at it, the more I wonder if we might have taken it down if we bet $40 on the river. We only need V to lay down a better hand 16% of the time to break even, and if V is bad enough to call with a worse ace or even king-high, we're just printing.

I might bet the flop.

Does everyone think the flop is a check multiway? You have a huge draw and block the nuts, except for straight flushes. I would rather not get raised, but you could call or 3-bet a raise. It is a little bit of a problem that you let someone get to the river and showdown with almost nothing.

Problem is no one folds even 2s2h on this flop. Literally. The people that folded must have had 64os no spade. Im dead serious. So I was just checking down most of my whiffs. I opened KQo so many times and whiffed every runout. Its how I got down to 800 from 1200.

the raise pre is too small after 3 limps

we should have alil SDV otr as played and passive players sometimes like to trap too after the board paired anyway.

But you didn't whiff the flop. You flopped an OESD and the nut flush draw with two overs. That's a pretty favorable flop.

I'd c-bet that hand about 100% of the time, barrel the turn at a high frequency, and depending on my reads, probably triple barrel the river at least some of the time.

Yes, technically, we'd be "bluffing", but we'd be bluffing with so much equity that it's almost a value bet. Yes, sometimes we'll get called the whole way, and lose when we don't improve, but there will also be times when everyone just folds, or we get there and win.

Even if we're going to play our draw passively, the line V took here is so weak, we could raise the turn or bet the river as a bluff.

This is where some hand-reading becomes valuable. What is the likelihood that V is betting 8x or better on the turn, and checking 8x or better on the river? Seems pretty unlikely to me, and more likely he's stabbing turn with air or some weak 1P holding that will fold at a high frequency to a bet of almost any size.

Assuming your ace-high was good, and wins at showdown if you check back, we'd get more value if we just bet flop and / or turn. We can still check back the river and win sometimes, against V's worse flush draws that bricked.

Result:

Why bet so much?

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$75 pre
PSB OTF
Shove turn

The small raise pre and passive play postflop is cringe.

Edit: as played not c-betting the flop with the nut flush draw, OESD and two overs is CRIMINAL and IDC how bad your opponents are.

Overbet on river only represents a boat. Hard to see what you checked the flop, check/called 1/5 pot on the turn, and then overbet the river. I guess you played carefully with a set until the board paired. His call is probably good.

If you bet less, it is may be more believable, but what could you play so passively with and then bomb the river?

I agree you need to bet the flop, partly for value.