this is a specific hand but also a more general question about your lines and range construction in single raised pots as the PFR on this type of board.

25 button straddle, hero raises the button to 125 over 4 limpers with AKT2ds. two callers. fishy reg who limped from SB and nitty house guy in LJ.

flop K54 all clubs, hero has AT of clubs. checks to me and i check back.

in general on this type of flop i am often betting small with nuts or nut blocker, as well as other high flushes or KK. i will occasionally check back the nut ace here for deception and to protect my checking range.

in this case i checked back because the fishy reg has a habit of stabbing way too often when flops check through. he also tends to overvalue non-nut hands and draws.

turn is a brick and fishy reg obliges by leading for 250. nit calls pretty quick. the fish started the hand with ~5k, the nit with around 3k and i cover. nit is folding most worse flushes, maybe even the 2nd nut flush, when i raise here, but may call with sets if getting a good price. would love to get more value from fishy reg but his calls may also price in the nit if he has a set. what are you making it?

On the flop the more you block, the less often you should bet your nut flushes. With AsK, you can check back a bit (70/30). If you had something like AsJsJT, bet every time. You should default to bet because value.

You have to also check back some As without nut flush to balance this.

In this particular situation again there are reasons to bet the flop (fish overvalues the hand) and to check because the fish autobets the turn.

On the turn I don't have solid plan. Again, feels like a place where you should default to raising with this hand given you didn't get additional blockers. It sucks because it's a spot where the fish can make hero folds but rangewise it's very profitable. The raise tells everyone that you have an As but call is extremely strong as well.

River would be the world easiest pot.

oh yeah, i am raising here 100%, question is more about sizing.

Well you're presenting a guessing game to your opponents.

Your goal should be to able to pot your stack in on the river. Also it should be balanced so that you have enough bluffs.

It's a great game especially against people who play way too many hands.

I don't think ATcc would be a hand you want to check back here - getting opponents to chase inferior clubs is our goal, and there's very little 55/44 combos. You said OTT "nit is folding most worse flushes, maybe even the 2nd nut flush, when i raise here, but may call with sets if getting a good price" - was the turn a flush? Thought it was a brick? You're raising the turn and representing nothing? This makes no sense.

We're representing Ac, whether it's the nuts or not is an exercise left to the caller.

We could easily check back something like AcKdJdTx on the flop or Ac876 and turn it into a bluff on the turn.

the flop is all clubs.

oops - long day yesterday for me

To me hands like this is best betting small on the flop and building a pot... because depending on how v calls you could increase the turn and river bets a little higher and build a good pot. So if opponent calls light with 2 pair or some other hand he could have but he could also have a flush and than will be priced in for a nice river bet. You could bet like 75 percent pot and hope he has a flush but I like said prefer betting like one third pot and than increasing another third pot bet on turn and than if they call make like a half pot river bet

This is always a tough one for me. Seems as if it depends on their exact holding and how they perceive you. Also on how station-y the fishy reg is. I would tend to go bigger. Around $900 - $1,000. Caveat is that I don't play this big often, and it's been a while!

i raised to 1k, fish folded, nit called

river was a 4 and the nit jammed for ~1600

Ouch. Just a bad river for us, unfortunately.

I think with the Nit lurking OTF I want to bet 'something' in an effort to make the Turn more painful to continue with missed sets. If you have the table image that you would do this without the nuts some of the time I think the Fish will come along anyway. You certainly can weigh the number of times Fish will mini-punt/f v getting stacked by Nit. Just don't want to give a Nit free cards if I can avoid it. Obv a Nit calling 'this' Flop extremely narrows down their range.

One could argue that the Fish was the 'delayed c-bet' and did our Flop work for us, so there's no difference between Hero Flop bet of 250 and Fish's Turn bet of 250.

On the flip side if I do choose to check the Flop I don't think I would pot Turn when something smaller does the trick .. like 650-700. Save some chips when the River goes bad and I have to deal with the Nit now. Yes, you can look at it both ways. Bet pot for max value or go something smaller because a call is a call when coming from a Nit! You know you're getting zero more chips from them on River .. so do you max it or entice them to stay?

Not sure what are bricks on Turn .. 9/T? Really any 2,3,6,7,8 could help Fish think they have a chance against the Flush Blocker.

Snap call and this River pretty much fill in the blanks for Nit. Very possible that they have KK with QhXh, so just never folding. GL

I really hemmed and hawed over this despite not posting. Here's what I've settled on.

Passing up a street of action with the nuts doesn't meaningfully improve your chances to play for stacks at SPR 20. So bet the flop here and check when shallow enough that you exploitatively play for stacks more frequently with the nuts.

Flop I think mostly betting with nut flush and dry ace, occasionally checking for deception / exploit. Like in this case, we block KK and sb is a known prober so checking back makes sense. I would also sometimes bet KK with a high club so that we can have nutted hands on a texture change.

I really like Munga’s analysis, I do admit that blocking KK I sometimes get trappy in this spot.

As played I’m just potting turn once nit calls the fish.

i think this is a reasonable argument and i don't necessarily disagree, but playing for stacks / not stacks seems like it may be an overly simple binary here, no? also, SPR with the fish is around 12, right? pot is 425 pre.

i do agree generally that the deeper we are here, the more likely we should be betting any hands containing the nut ace on the flop because of the pressure it exerts, when we have it and when we don't.

but more generally, what i mean is, if the goal is to get as much money as possible in the pot, then surely there are times where it will be nearly impossible to play for stacks - are we still betting flop 100% of the time in those instances? aren't there at least some combinations of players and boards where we may get more $ in by checking?

in this specific spot, i think it will be really difficult to get stacks in with the best hand by the river. fish is probably check-calling any worse flushes unless i check back at least one street, and the only way he calls all three streets and gets the money in is with exactly the 2nd nuts.

I'm not sure how I got to SPR 20. My bad. I think of it as strats changing as SPR slides from shallow to deep rather than a binary question.

When we are oop, there are going to be "check raise with top of range" spots, for sure. But ip is different.

Two responses. First, specific to the fish and this board, checking back AcQc when HU probably makes sense, moreso holding a K. If it's impossible for him to know he's holding the second nuts, exploiting makes sense to me. But there's still a third player in the hand.

Second, I think "the goal" is to max the value of our strategy. Imho, the solution here is not to bet the nuts less often. Because that prunes very valuable branches from our strat even when we are so deep we know bet bet bet *can't* gii by itself. Broadening our non nut barrels makes more sense to me.

Thanks for the op. It really has me thinking.