A9o and it only gets worse

Sick river. Looks fine, now fold. If he wasn't already good, he is now. You beat a pure bluff, and from your description, he's not the type -- and unless you've been playing like a complete maniac/idiot or you've been folding every river over-bet, this is not the spot to bluff.

Result:

Wow. He must think you are full of it or has seen you fold a lot. Or he just has your number, which happens.

Or he just went for it hoping we don’t have a queen, of which we will have plenty so no problem folding A9.

What are we doing with sets here?

Folding.

Banana - this feels like a very results oriented post, given you have an hour of observation on the player, and nothing would suggest he would deviate from a typical low stakes player, who typically underbluffs rivers (certainly big river bets).

Question would you have posted this if he showed up with something like QJ?

I feel it should be a fold, but what hands should we defend with in our range other than the Q combos? There are lots of Qs so I am not sure if we need anything else that unblocks the draws.

I think it’s a close spot. FWIW I leaned call before seeing the spoil after seeing the heart draw and no hearts in your hand. Villain would 3bet a lot of the strong Qx hands pre. So him having a Q in his hand is less likely

Not a bad fold though and villain made a decent river play although he should have found a raise on the turn imo

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PRE - I probably just fold A9o pre, even from the BTN, when the straddle is on, and we're less than 100 straddles deep. If we're going to raise, and need to get through 3 opponents, I'd probably raise bigger, to $40.

FLOP - I play ace-high flops as check-back or over-bet. Our hand would fall into the over-bet category, so I don't like the 50 into 70 sizing. I'd prefer it to be 95-105.

TURN - So...if V had AA/KK/JJ/99/AK, he likely would have 3B us pre. If he flopped top 2P with AJ, he probably would have raised flop. The only hands that we need to worry about are QT combos, right?

If we want to cap V, I think we need to go smaller here, like 1/2 pot, around 85 or 90. He doesn't have much incentive to raise with his strong hands when we bet almost 3/4 pot. All his QT will want to raise, when there are two hearts on board, and we'll have scads of AK in our range.

RIVER - Wow. Yuck.

I'm struggling to find a hand we can beat that makes some sense. Maybe KJhh or JThh because he blocks KQ and QJ? Maybe J9dd? Seems like all his "bluffs" would be 2P, hoping to fold out a better 2P or a set.

Just fold. V let us off the hook. If he shows a bluff, don't tilt, just say nice bluff and move onto the next hand.

OMG. Just saw the reveal. Mad props to your V. Probably needs a wheelbarrow for balls that big.

Going back and re-reading the OP, this jumped out at me: "...quite tight and aggressive with low VPIP. Almost always coming in for a 3-bet pre."

I dunno. With that read, it's hard to credit this guy for finding his way here with very many Qx combos that aren't 3B pre (AQ) or folded pre (QT) or folded on the flop or turn (KQ/QJ).

And if he does have Qx, and he's good enough to see that we also have a ton of QX, it doesn't make sense for him to try to push us off a chop, or get this much value from our 2P+, when those hands are so easy to fold on this run-out.

Not saying I could find the call here, as played. I don't think I could. But I think this hand is easier to play if we fold out more of his future bluffs with a big bet on the flop, and make him raise off his straights with a smaller bet on the turn.

I didn't expect this on my BINGO card today. BTN players should usually be open-raising unsuited aces here down to A6/A5. Having A9o IP vs. 3 blinds sounds to me like a no-brainer raising hand.

FWIW, I don't think being "only" 85 straddles effective really changes anything.

I'd raise A9o from the BTN if we were deeper, and there were only two blinds to get through. Depending on how deep we are and how competent I think the players in the blinds are, I might be willing to open even wider.

Here, it's pretty borderline, when at least one of the players in the blinds appears competent / capable, and will apparently over-defend, and were not that deep.

And like I said, if we are going to raise here, I'd raise bigger. A9o isn't likely to make the sort of hand that warrants playing a three-street game. If we're going to play it, we should prefer to play a two-street game, and we don't mind if we just take it down pre or on the flop.