I open button with 2 red 5s. Expert 3 bets sb, bb folds, I call.

Flop: 844

He bets I call.

Turn: K

He bets, I call?

River: K

He checks, do I have a value bet?

Yes

Bet and expect to be beat some of the time.

Agreed

Well played. Bet river.

Against an expert is 55 a bet/fold? If so, what's our minimum bet/call hand here? If not, what's our maximum vbet/fold hand?

I would bet call.

Yes, I would bet my A highs here and small PP's for value.

I'd be tempted to raise the turn - getting him to fold six outs here is a nice. Thoughts?

raising turn is polarizing a hand that fits nowhere in that realm. if he calls you're in rough shape and if he folds he won't be able to bluff river.

Vbetting Ahi is too thin -- vbetting 55 is especially good since you don't block Ahi for villain.

Calling down is standard but as an exploitive play Raising flop or turn is interesting. I think many players will double barrel too wide. Given how dry turn is, a lot of good players will put us on a showdown hand and underbluff river. This combination makes vraising 55 a lot more attractive.

if you're raising 55 on turn why not raise aq? at least then you can improve. this seems bad to me. who knows what our calling turn range would look like then

Nh

Turn raising range should include trips, full houses, Kx, AA, and draws. It definitely should not include 55.

Putting this in stove, if we give villain a range of 44+,A5s+,K9s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,98s,A8o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo , we have about 42% equity. We become approx 50/50 with 77.

that range is too tight

That must be a range for earlier streets. (I assume ten-high can't call here.) I can't tell if post #13 is referring to the context of turn raises, but for the river bet, seems like we'd be farther behind than that 42% versus the hands that call. If we expect to bet-call a lot of bluffs from hands like ten-high that adds quite a bit of value to our bet though.

The 42% should actually be 47% (I must have misread the output earlier) based on the simplifying assumption that he fires two barrels here with his entire pf 3b range. When the K pairs on the river our equity goes up to about 53%.

AutoZone, what range do you think is more reasonable for him to 3b here? 33+,A2s+, A5o+,K5+, K8o+ in addition to what was listed before?

probably something like 30%. a2s a6o, k7s k8o, t8s etc

We're 51.5% vs a top 30% 3b range if he bets flop and turn 100%. Are there any hands that check the turn to us here? The K is a great card for him to barrel and he is giving up significant value if he checks any lower pocket pairs and even strong A high's.

Side note, only an A or a 9+ club on the turn makes us an equity dog vs his range.

i would never be checking turn with anything as villain. i could be wrong in that tho.

I'm not sure why we're discussing villain's preflop 3 bet range? The only thing that matters about it is whether enough of it bet/calls us to warrant value raising the turn (it does), whether his river check discounts a number of his stronger hands (it does), and whether we can get called by enough worse hands to warrant betting the river (we probably do).

I agree. Bet river, lose sometimes. I'd also bet/call river. What is the consensus there?

Bet/call

I'm glad I posted this hand because at the time it seemed like a close decision but looking at it now I think it's a clear bet. I've been on a pretty gross downswing and just from seeing this, it's clear my mental game's been affected.

I checked, he showed queen high and claimed he was raising if I bet.

Queen high seems like a reasonable hand for him to bluff raise but if we are calling with 55, then what is he targeting? If he's targeting ace high, that means he expects us to value bet ace high. But if he's not calling with queen high, why would we value bet ace high?

Maybe he's targeting 55 because he knows I'm tilted enough to fold it but doesn't know I'm tilted enough to check back. That's probably the right answer.

I was the villain this hand. I did say i would raise this river and i probably would have if you had bet, but i no longer think it’s a reasonable play. At the time i thought that i could
Check raise some strong hands here but thinking about it now it would be risking way too much value to check river.