Essentially I’m asking how do you construct your betting range in this exact spot?

For a full ring game? Totally differently (and I'd probably be more in line with HawkesDave's reasoning).

But we're talking here about a low/mid stakes tournament setting with fairly short levels. The question becomes: Do I need to protect my ranges? Will people even notice my ranges? Remember: In order for people to range you they have to actually see your cards at showdown (i.e. if i c-bet top trips or a bluff type hand and everyone folds - how did that, in the eyes of my opponents, protect my range? They don't know diddly squat about what I had.)

So my question here is: How often do people see me go to showdown with specific flop textures, betting patterns and preflop actions from specific positions in such a torurnament? Enough to range me? Especially if tables get switched around after every couple hours? Probably not.

There's a better way to look at this. (Grunch, may have been covered above.)

If you check this flop your opponent will think you have Ax. You can then bluff very small on most turns and win a high% of pots. (Bet enough to deny odds to gutshot draws, but lower than your usual bluff/value inflection point so that it looks value heavy.) If your opponent calls, river a 3 or give it up.

In response to your specific comment above, it's actually a great play to bet your Ax on an AAx flop into thinking opponents, and I can remember getting three streets of value in the early stages of a main event doing precisely that - betting hard fast and large with AJs on an AA3 flop safe runout. Opponent couldn't believe I was barrelling value.

Yeah, playing exploitable in smallstakes is the way to go, I agree on that.

However I’m still curious about your cbetting strat in this specific spot. Even if we play exploitative we still have a range, right?

Usually raising small pairs with 25 bb's is a bad idea. But if you haven't raised in a while from anywhere this raise will look strong and you can rep an A, K, Q on the flop. Or if flop is rags, you get to value bet what could be the best hand. But I'd rather have 30 bb's to go this route.

Pre-flop bet size was good.

Flop bet size was good too. Look, this is like a $200 tourney and a guy with KQ butchered it. He should fold flop because in the end he called 20k to win like 100k with a gutter ( and he should have won only 65k). And he could have been drawing dead. maybe he thinks a K or Q would be good. But still pretty awful.

Turn is awesome.

River you can check fold. You started with 25 bb's and you blew through 5 of them. I would call it quits after flop call. My guess is if guy misses his straight and doesn't pair up he might just check back river too with some showdown value...

I'd rather play exploitive than exploitable

My c-betting range and my checking range are the same - Only how often I do it with what kinds of hands varies.
E.g. I would not c-bet this the first time (in the given tournament situation with unknown players who I give an initial status of competent TAG or semi-competent LAG...if they are a competent LAG I'm probably screwed anyhow.)

When it does go to showdown then I might c-bet this exact same situation the second time around - fully expecting my opponents to have caught on that I like to slow-play monsters (or maybe the third time if I think my opponents aren't too attentive)

But again: In a tournament with short levels you rarely get to have such similar situations too often to matter.

Generally my c-betting probability goes way down the drain when I start to have two or more opponents postflop. The idea of c-betting is to make people with weak holdings fold and win the pot right there. With two or more villains in the mix that probability takes a nosedive so fast it isn't even funny (because people have learned that playing KJ after an early position raiser is a bad idea because of domination issues...except for Ax. Most people seem to have Ax in their range from all positions)
With 3 players in the pot such a wide range of card values will be covered that it's very likely someone at least hit something and an 'unthinking' c-bet will accomplish nothing.

But that's just a very subjective opinion.

Your posts are basically several paragraphs of actually nothing.

When we play in an exploitive way we are by definition also exploitable. Still, you got me there.

What I haven’t gotten from you though, are any ranges.

Look, I don’t really need to know how you play your range in this spot but you do. That is more or less the point I was trying to make.

nah, while this may be mathematically/logically true, in poker it's false and to a large extent this is where the $ comes from

fish don't turn into sharks mid-hand, and if they do then you misread them in the first place

good players don't watch you exploit weak players then assume you're running the same lines/ranges in later hands against them (if they do and you spot it, then you can exploit them too)

exploit to your hearts content, it doesn't/shouldn't make you exploitable provided each new hand starts with an accurate assessment of your opponent/s tendencies

Lol I quite obviously didn’t mean that we shouldn’t exploit fish etc. I just stated it as fact. When we deviate from gto approach to exploit someone, we can then in turn be exploited by others. Wether they know how to do it or not is irrelevant.

as much as i enjoy semantics, you're missing a far more important point with considerable application

the fact that we can play in an exploitative way without being exploitable is rather fundamentally important

you're saying that by deviating from GTO lines against non-GTO opponents, we open ourselves up to being exploited - but you're ignoring the fact that we are playing against a non-GTO opponent. if said opponent COULD exploit then they are more likely actually a GTO opponent who you incorrectly categorised as non-GTO.

so in fact what you're saying is that if Hero plays non-GTO lines against a GTO opponent then Hero can be exploited. but you can't say that playing exploit lines against an non-GTO opponent is exploitable by that opponent, because if that were true then your uncle would be your aunt.

And as I said: I can't tell you because it depends on how many players I'm up against, what kinds of players I'm up against, what the stack sizes are, whether it's tournament or ring game (and in tournaments even how long the levels are would make a difference)

But even if all were kept constant there is no hand I would play the exact same way every time. I would bet trip aces on the flop almost all of the time against one good opponent in a ring game. But not always. I would check trip aces against two or more loose opponents with one being a short stack in a tournament almost always - but not all of the time. That's why I said: I have all my hands in my betting and checking range. I know this may not be GTO but in a tournament like this GTO matters very little when there's still many non-GTO players at the table.

GTO play makes you less exploitable (not non-exploitable because no one plays perfect GTO). But what it doesn't do is make you play maximum +EV as long as your opponents aren't perfect GTO players.

If you're heads up against a non-GTO player postflop then how much you play GTO or not doesn't matter a bit against with respect to any other GTO-player at the table no longer in the hand. GTO play only matters when you're in a hand against another GTO player.

To me GTO play is what you should try for when
- you're up against an unknow player until you find something to exploit
- you're up against another GTO player
- you're up against a better player

Any other time exploitive play seems a lot more lucrative to me.

I’m ever so slightly tilted by the level of this conversation I’ve gotten myself into, lol.

I don’t think I ever said that the player we exploit can exploit us right back. I just said that others could. I think your point should be fairly obvious to most tbh. Unless I’m still missing something, that is.

This whole thing started when I tried to get something specific out of antiatlas. Then I made the mistake of typing exploitable instead of exploitative. After my error had been commented on by him, I just made the remark I made to support the next paragraf in that message (my point).

To antiatlas I would like to say that no one is advocating that you should play the hands always the same way or that playing gto is max ev strategy and obviously your range changes when situation changes.

I don’t think this conversation has much value anymore so I’ll bow out.
GL to you both.

How about CALL pre? :-) If someone raised, fold it, if you get to see the flop, check if 3 is there and fold otherwise. Questionable at the first glance, this line sometimes confuses opponents as they think that hero slow plays top 3% of hands because a lot of people still doing it regularly! Anyway, the aim of the call is seeing the flop cheaply because your stack does not allow to raise comfortably.