AA at the River

His $12 open over a limp pre smells weak. Not giving him 9x when he doesn't x/r flop. Not giving him QQ for this small river bet size. Really hard to give him any strong hands here. Maybe he has a straight at some low frequency, but I'd think he'd go bigger.

So, I guess raise, but if he's weak, there's not much in his range that can call a big raise. Maybe if we're lucky he gets curious with JJ or TT, or QX if we raise small.

Think we missed some value checking back turn with the Ad in our hand.

I think we should bet the turn. I just call river. He's not calling w/ worse. I don't mind a raise -- I just don't think we gain anything from it -- we have more to lose than gain, in other words. If he raises, we are toast.

I like the way you played it. I think checking turn for pot control is good since we are worried on a 9 or flush.

As for River, close, we might get value from TT, JJ, but I think it's marginal, and I probably just call.

If we do bet, I'd min raise, and insta fold to a 3b (assuming like most low stake players he has no 3b river bluffs in his range)

I like a min-raise or slightly more. Fold to a raise, unfortunately. Still not sure we get more value, but worth a try.

All in

If the standard open in the game is $15, and he only opened to $15 over a limp, I'd still think that's weak, unless maybe I thought he didn't realize there was a limp, or if he'd been opening for smaller sizes.

Because your check back on the turn may look weak to him, it's possible he's betting small with a strong hand, because he doesn't think you'll call a bigger bet. But because our check back does look weak, we could raise and maybe get called by worse.

There just aren't many worse hands that will call a big raise here, and unfortunately we didn't start deep enough to raise-fold. It looks like we have...$200 remaining?

I know I said you could raise small, but I wasn't doing the math. You can't min-click it to $120 and fold for another $80 if he jams. So, I dunno, just flat call or jam, unless you think he'll call a min-click but not a jam, and / or you think he might spaz-jam if you min-click him.

This c-bet flop, check-back turn with SDV, bluff-catch river line is a favorite of Marc Goone from Hungry Horse. But our hand is better than the modest SDV examples he uses.

Since we're pretty under-repped, I don't think it's a huge mistake to jam river, to get looked up by all the QX or JJ/TT in his range. If I was V and had one of those hands, I don't think I'd believe you if you jammed here, after checking back the turn.

He normally was open-raising to $12. It was also a late morning, weekday game, with at least half the table sitting with $200 or less.

True

At this point I'll just say I eventually saw his hand, and I was pretty shocked at his cards.

If his normal open is to $12, and the game is full of short stacks, we might give him more credit for having a real hand.

I somewhat expected there to be a semi-surprise ending here, if only because the hand appears (deceptively?) straightforward.

Going back and re-reading the OP, my honest opinion is that you're not starting deep enough for you to do much more than you did to help define V's hand. Like, I don't see where you could have done something dramatically different.

I would have bet the turn, but just for value, not "for information". The fact you didn't bet the turn adds some ambiguity on the river, but I'm not going to tell you that you $hlt the bed here, because I don't think you did. If you bet turn and he just called, it's not like we'd check back the river.

So...yeah, looking forward to hearing what bag of $hlt V brought to our party.

I ended up calling, although given that the river was basically a blank, I probably should have min-raised.

It's unfortunate that you got AA vs his KK with him in MP and you next to act. If you were later position, maybe he plays it differently. Do you think your image is too tight or nitty? Your 3B next to act is strong, but most low stakes players are going to 4B KK from OOP regardless.