Mistake to cbet largish on low monochrome board?

Solver range bets 1/5p in these spots, but I truly don't have a deep understanding of why, and so I don't have a great framework for understanding what deviations we should look for in our opponents and how to exploit them with other strategies.

Yes because you aren’t targeting flush draws.

I don't find that a compelling reason to deviate. Most generally, low stakes players' biggest postflop exploitability is overfolding (relative to their range, of course, not in absolute terms of what hands they make to showdown with), so the fact that they're inelastic to sizing and don't raise enough make underbetting an even more pronounced exploit of this tendency. (Especially when accounting for the prevalence of MW pots in these games where underbetting is the only viable way to maintain bluffing strats.)

This is why I seek to understand WHY certain plays are optimal at equilibrium, and then exploit based on whatever deviations I see, which--in turn--is why it bothers me so much that I haven't wrapped my head around wtf solvers are "thinking" here.

The best I can glean is that raising is particularly unfavorable for the defender, and betting very small forces the defender to have a raising range. But I don't really know what to make of that because if our range is protecting us against raises, then doesn't that make betting large (or at least as large as you can get away with without overly-polarizing your range) more favorable because we don't have to worry about getting raised off our hand?

Obviously you know they aren't thinking, but from what I've studied when you get to a flop with something similar to a GTO preflop range then both the raiser and the defender have roughly the same amount of suited combos. so even though the raiser has more good Ax hands ... it's not enough. So when you combine that with the fact that pairs/2pairs/straights all go down significantly in value, you end up in a place where most of the range that wants to bet a lot is similar for both players ... so both players default to small bet sizes and are careful about raising.

Saying that, live low limit players will have a lot of unsuited trash they shouldn't in range ... and will massively overvalue two pair or straights.
One thing that would be useful for anyone with a local solver (assume someone has done it at some point, but I haven't seen it) is if you force one side to do all the stupid low limit things on monotone boards (bet pot or x/r with overpairs without a suit, be prepared to stack off with a bare straight, etc) and see how the other side responds.

Also some of the lines I've seen people take are just horrifically bad, like flop x/r a bare overpair but then 100% fold to any further action. So the solver would probably do things that look maniac levels of insane against that.

To OP, I don't mind this line but not sure if it's often better to just 3bet flop and go with it (apart from AsKs/AsQs/As4s/etc or maybe 66, this might be your best hand). Would guess on turn V is deciding you have roughly 0 full houses. Don't see any reasons to bet/raise after the flop.

I know this is a bad thing to admit outloud on a public forum as a solver stan, but I have no patience for nodelocking bad trees over multiple branches of the tree—or maybe I would with a different interface than PIO’s nodelocking—so someone else is gonna have to volunteer for that and report back.

In any case, I’m having trouble understanding your explanation because on other flops like where we have an advantage across range like QJT and 333, the solver just bets range for a big size. It doesn’t make sense to me that flop advantages (including among the nuts) would lead to depolarizing AND downsizing so much that it ends up being less money committed to the pot on average than even unfavorable flops like 973tt.

Google is your friend...

AI Overview

Solvers prefer to c-bet small on monotone boards because it allows them to maximize value from their stronger range without risking too much against an opponent's potential flush, which is a much stronger hand on such boards; by betting small, they can encourage a wider range of calls from their opponent, including weaker hands that might fold to a larger bet, while still maintaining the ability to extract value from their good hands.

Key reasons for small c-bets on monotone boards:

Lowering opponent's equity:

When you have a flush, your opponent's range will have very low equity against you, so a small bet forces them to call with a wider range of hands, including marginal draws that might not improve.

Bluff limitations:

On monotone boards, your bluffs have less equity against a potential flush, so a smaller bet helps avoid over-committing to a bluff when your opponent might have a strong hand.

Blocker effect:

By betting small, you force your opponent to defend with a wider range of hand combinations, making it harder for them to select specific strong hands to call with.

Board dynamism:

Monotone boards are considered very dynamic, meaning a single card on the turn can drastically change the board texture and hand strength, so a small bet allows you to adapt to the changing situation.

From Upswing:

A nice golden rule is that when c-betting you generally don't want to use bigger sizes when the board can change so much, and monotone boards can change SO much. This is why we mainly see small sizes on monotone boards.

Grunch - AA with NFD 133 bb’s deep I’m looking to play for stacks obviously. If someone flopped a set good for them, we have reasonable outs. No one should have a straight. I’m trying to build a bigger pot before the board gets scarier for V’s. Just my experience. Not GTO approved. V’s will called with any piece of cheese once, so make that call hurt, then down bet a little when they know they’re drawing thin to dead but ‘had to call, pot odds you know’.

Appreciate the research (google)! I'd say that presolver many cbet largish (e.g 50-70%) on monotone boards to deny equity. In the postsolver days, it's reasonable to assume our intuition was misguided, even though, in this case, it remains logical (i.e. the perception might be that we're betting to deny equity but since we have the overpair plus nfd we're betting pure value). I wonder, deuceblocker, if you would have bet smaller with AxQs, for instance, or whether you'd still have used the 50% size. I mean, we're more likely to have overcards, sometimes with a decent flush draw, on this monotone board. I suspect that there's also a tendency to oversize with smaller overpairs, although I believe these shouldn't be c-bet at all.

Whatever GTO says, I thought I wanted to build the pot with a big hand.

I didn't try to get it in though. Result was villain showed QsJs for a flopped flush. I was 25% against his hand on the turn. Kind of weird he checked back the river. I guess afraid of a higher flush or a boat.

I wouldn’t say AA really needs to build a bigger pot. 1/5p followed by pot sized bets on the turn and river gets 12 times the preflop pot in, which seems about max value for single pair on this board as a standard.

Super nutted hands require villain to put a raise in at some point to get max value, in which case putting them on the defensive by betting big on all streets isn’t necessarily the way to go.

The band of value hands that most benefit from just going Bb/Bb/Bb are hands like sets and baby flushes.

I think it’s fine to exploit live players by just picking a small batch of hands that clearly prefer one size in a vacuum and just going with that one size regardless of what the rest of your range is doing, but I think you should at least correctly identify what those hands are and not just bet huge with all value hands.

I wouldn't go balls out starting on the flop. If V flopped a made flush and we don't improve, we're just bloating a pot we'll lose. If V doesn't have a flopped flush, he's not going to want to put a ton of money in with worse 1P. If we do end up improving to a flush, there'll be a four flush on board, and it'll be hard to get paid if we start betting big on the flop and continue to bet big on the turn and river, even if V also has a flush.

I'd mostly just play this hand as a check-call on flop and turn from OOP. We can block river if we brick, and check-raise if we hit. It sucks to see a monotone flop with AA, because it so dramatically downgrades the relative strength of our hand. Especially in a SRP against an MP limper, he's just not going to have enough worse hands that are strong enough to target for value if we bet big. We should probably just be targeting 22/44, 77 and 6x by betting super-small. Those aren't hands that are going to want to get stacks in with us.