We are very early in the $88 $50k megastack on ACR. V and I are in top 10 in chips (about 200 registered right now) and V has been very aggressive. I doubled up early with 22 flopping a set vs AA a few levels ago. That's been my only significant action.

OTTH

V (around 160 bbs) opens UTG to 2.5 bbs. I call on the BB (around 120 bbs) with AJ.

Flop (7 bbs): 2J5. I check, V checks back.

Turn (7 bbs): A. I bet 6 bbs, V tanks for a few seconds and calls.

River (19 bbs): 9. I bet 10 bbs. V piles.

Me?

Hero slaps himself for betting the turn?

Don't see how you can make this call.

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As played I would fold the river. One of the reasons Villain would tank the turn is if he had an A high flush draw especially with a K or Q.

On the turn I would have bet less. Probably 4.5 or 5 bb's. The pot is 6.5 bb's.

I probably would have check called on the river. But bet fold is fine. However my bet sizing would have been smaller. More like 5 or 6 bb's.

Sorry, I meant river

Betting the river is fine but I would make it smaller like 1/3 or 1/4 pot so we control moderate sizing. Villain will call with less and is less likely to raise with hands that beat us unless it is a flush and even then would likely be the nut flush.

If villain doesn't have a flush then it looks a lot like we do, so betting large isn't going to get a lot of calls when we are ahead.

Thing is if we check call Villain has control over the sizing and if he bets 18.5 bb's or 37 bb's its hard to know what to do. I usually fold but its wrong if Villain overbluffs (which I think is uncommon). A bet of like 12 bb's is a call for us and it would cost us some if Villain would have been raising us (like he did) and we would fold (like hero did --- I'm guessing).

Man I'm all out of sorts with how I read the HH.

I agree with you on betting small and folding to the shove as played.

Interesting turn spot, would guess betting big doesn't make a lot of sense when he has plenty Ax but our hand clearly benefits from big.

As played I think river is good and easy fold to jam for that price and size

I would go for a check raise here on turn. That Ace smacks his check back range hard. He's got plenty of Ax to bet, and we can get a lot of value from that.

I don't think Villain's raise on the river makes sense. You say he is very aggressive, but he checked back a flush draw on a dryish flop? Bull$$hit.

Call.

So this was my thinking exactly.

Yeah, of course he can have it, but he can have other stuff as well. When you show us a hand like this there is some bias that you are showing it because you got stacked. Would you show us if he turned over a bluff?

What do you think about check raising the turn?

I like check raising the turn, I wanted to build a pot though and was afraid there was a decent chance it checks through -- since I expected V to c-bet that flop almost always. I'm not sure if I post this hand if I fold the river. But I would defintiely post it if I called and doubled. I think the massive overbet with an aggressive player who checked the flush draw IP is very interesting. Now maybe he's not as aggressive as I thought -- only played with him 3-4 levels. Also, wanted to see if anyone would think a call here was justified -- I still think if my read is right that V is aggressive -- the over-raise on river screams bluff.

You will build a bigger pot with a check raise than a bet/call. It’s a pretty rare opponent who is aggressive and won’t stab an A turn. Even those hands he might choose to do that with (TT seems an obvious candidate to check flop and turn), you probably only get one street of value from.

For me the over raise on the river screams "polarized" (nut flush/big flush or bluff --- can't ever be a set or worse two pair for value).

The ultimate question is what % of the time is villain bluffing? For a call to make money villain has to bluff over 40% of the time to break even. If you think Villain is bluffing more than half the time (which is what it sounds like) then its a must call. If I thought Villain was bluffing less than half the time though I would fold because its about EV even at best (over 40%) and I'd rather play on.

From a GTO standpoint people sometimes don't cbet with nut flush draws to balance. From a non-GTO standpoint people sometimes don't cbet with flush draws because they don't want to be raised and face a turn all in or large bet and have to fold.

Pre is fine, low frequency 3-bet vs. aggro player is ok because we should be able to call a lot of 4-bets comfortably.

Flop is standard, obviously. Villain should be betting range so it is weird the checked back, so that does set off some tiny alarm bells.

I really like pot or even an overbet on the turn as played. Really want to get max value from Ax hands that checked back for some reason. Like that better than check-raise because villain will sometimes want to check some marginal hands and we want to get max value from the weak Ax/Jx/66-TT that might call one bet. If he is checking back flush draws we want to make sure they have to pay to see a river.

As played, don't really hate checking our exact hand here, although if villain is ripping for this sizing it probably doesn't matter if we bet small. As played this is probably just a fold, hands with a heart are much better bluffcatchers.

I like everything except the eventual call

an active aggressive opponent will cbet Ahx with multiple fd sd backdoors almost 100% whereas they may check back some hh combos

and if you can take Ahx bluffs out of V range on the river, you’re left with hh heavy range

This is a great point that I missed. His bluffs will be almost always Ahx. One way to exploit overly aggressive players is that they ‘spend’ all their bluffs on earlier streets on some runouts, like this.

An eye opening post for sure