All right, so, as far as the flop decision goes, my thinking is that I don't want to play a big pot here. I have a solid chance of having the best hand, but this board is very dynamic and I can't really improve. A 2 giving me the wheel gives any 6x a better hand; while it's less likely they have 2x in their hand if I hit a set of aces, I'm also probably not getting a lot of money in against a worse hand-- and I don't want to be piling in money with only two outs to the hand I'm looking for, which may not even be good. They could already have 76s, and I don't even want to build a pot against a hand like 65s, with the ICM pressure. (I did suspect the button was playing wide enough with that chip lead that these are possibilities, as are any sets and probably 54s.)
There's an argument for betting here and just folding if the button raises, as weak/tight as that sounds. I decided to check and hope it checks through or that I can get to a turn for just one bet. I'm hoping to show this down as cheaply as possible unless I get some kind of miraculous nutted runout.
Instead, this happens, as some of you suspected it might:
Ignition - 3500/7000 NL - Holdem - 5 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4
SB: 56.08 BB
BB: 41.62 BB
Hero (UTG): 63.12 BB
CO: 23.51 BB
BTN: 68.53 BB
5 players post ante of 0.1 BB,
SB posts SB 0.5 BB,
BB posts BB 1 BB
Pre Flop: (pot: 2 BB) Hero has A
A
Hero raises to 2.14 BB,
fold,
BTN calls 2.14 BB,
fold,
BB calls 1.14 BB
Flop: (7.43 BB, 3 players) 4
5
3
BB checks,
Hero checks,
BTN bets 2.7 BB,
BB raises to 6.61 BB,
Hero?
Now what?