Ignition - $0.50 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP: 102.36 BB
CO: 39.56 BB
BTN: 101.5 BB
SB: 116.8 BB
Hero (BB): 185.82 BB
UTG: 206.28 BB

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has A T

fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to 3 BB, fold, Hero calls 2 BB

Flop: (6.5 BB, 2 players) 5 J K
Hero checks, BTN bets 2.1 BB, Hero calls 2.1 BB

Turn: (10.7 BB, 2 players) Q
Hero checks, BTN bets 5.1 BB, Hero raises to 20.38 BB, BTN calls 15.28 BB

River: (51.46 BB, 2 players) 5
Hero bets 27.46 BB, BTN raises to 76.02 BB and is all-in, Hero?

The solver seems to like a river shove, but does a bet-fold work better at the microstakes in practice?

If you have a perfect read that villain will not call a potsize+ bet with 2pair even when he should, and that he will only raise this board with the nuts, then sure bet fold.

The solver likes a shove because he has to defend 40% of his range there to be unexploitable which means he will need to call with 2pair type hands, 5X unboated if he has it. And population definitely will make those calls.

Based on your river sizing you get to have ~25% bluffs, based on his shove size you have to defend ~50% of your range, which means you have to call it off with all of your boats and straights anyway.

I would be cautious with the microstakes adjustments, Ignition 50NL Fast isn't a soft game, way tougher than almost any 2/5 live. For sure even some of the better players are value heavy, especially with river raise shoves as an exploit to the population, but moving from shoving here to bet fold is a drastic adjustment, especially when you're an unknown and could easily be a spastic fish in his eyes, and there are a ton of bluffs you could be reasonably using here. He's going to call the shove more than enough for it to be probably the most EV play

Thanks, Dilly! I always think of 50NL Zone as soft, so it's good to hear that isn't necessarily true. Maybe I suck a little less than I thought lol. I so often hear that bet-folding rivers is usually a great play at the micros since people bluff raise rivers so rarely. But ya, I really felt like I may be going too far here with a hand this strong. It would be really gross to get "bluffed" by T9 or another AT, for example.

I wouldn't discount that conventional wisdom though, there is no doubt that many small stakes live and micro stakes online players fall into that category where value bet thin fold over-fold to raises is a very good exploit. But 50NL Zoom/Fast/Whatever is going to have a more diverse population of actually strong players, and decent regs who's error is being tighter than they should so the value bet thin doesn't really work as well

That is why we widen our ranges a bit in position, even against 3bets (especially good when close to 150bb+ deep). There are 1755 unique flops, at least 50% favor the caller with lower cards.

So I did go for the bet-fold thinking that not many microstakes players will bluff here. Villain had QJ and wrecked me with his blocker bluff. I think my hand was just way too strong to take this risk. Sick play by villain, bad play by me. Thanks for the help!

i don't think we ever have a boat with our line and we're betting into a guy who can have a bunch of them. if i wanted to pick some at to call with id start with the ones without diamonds.

Bet/folding small seems unattractive given how massive of a nut advantage we’re at. Only one combo of K5s/Q5s/J5s each (assuming you call those), and only one combo of 55. Meanwhile V can totally have all the top boats and we can’t.

I think shove and get villain to station with something like AK, T9, KQ, or 5x diamonds seems more appealing

I agree with the heuristic that we want to bet/fold more at smaller stakes, but that usually applies more in position IIRC

I don't think the pot size lends itself to bet-fold. If it were 35 or 40 BBs, sure, but not 50BB+