How thin is the ideal fish fillet?

Can't figure out why you x/r the flop. this is becoming a theme for your posts

"What do I do AFTER I irredeemably botched the hand???"

Your x/r screams draw. V's can't have NFD themselves. The draw comes in on the turn. Finish telling your story and jam it in. Maybe you'll get a set to fold. (big maybe) You're gonna have to pay off small flushes.

CRing flop sucks. checking is fine but just c/c.

i dislike your turn bet

my first instinct was to bet small, but i thought about it more, and i think you should just c/f to any decent sized bet as you already announced you have a huge hand or draw on the flop, and the draw completed and you bet anyway on the turn. thus when he calls the turn bet he is left with no hands you beat.

its too bad the board paired, otherwise you could think about jamming river as a bluff.

also just calling flop in the first hand you posted vs a maniacs 1/4 pot bet is horrible. you are a favorite vs a tight range and crushing a wide range, why are you smooth calling? id raise flop and assuming you are less than 200 BB deep, try to GII on the turn.

Grunch:

PRE - raise bigger. Make it $30. Hell, make it $35.

FLOP - I think this is one of the few spots I wouldn't mind c-betting multi-way and OOP. Probably just potting it.

Our hand is likely best, but isn't likely to improve, we're OOP to the field, and there are a million draws and worse 1P we can target for value.

V's large bet looks like value in need of protection. He could have a worse 1P hand, but he could also have 2P or a set.

There's no real reason to x/r when the CO and BTN fold and V bets over 1/2 pot. We can just call.

If you're going to x/r for value, go huge. I would have made this at least $300 with a set or 2P.

TURN - I'd probably just check to see what V does. If we're going to bet I like the down bet. We could probably go even smaller, like $100.

RIVER - as played, just check to let V bluff or bet worse for value.

You keep putting yourself into these awkward spots by refusing to size up pre and not exploiting your opponents' obvious leaks.

If V is a loose passive calling station, why is he betting over 1/2 pot into three opponents. Why are we going for an x/r?
What does he have that's calling our x/r and turn barrel?

Maybe he just has worse QX, but it won't surprise me if he flopped 2P or a set, or maybe stabbed at it with a draw that got there on the turn.

So you're sizing your value with the strength of your hand? No thanks.

A general tip that might help you somewhat Banana. You might try categorizing hands into different classes on the flop. Ex) Nuts looking to play for stacks, 2-street value hands, marginal made hands, nut draws, marginal draws, etc. Like if you have a 2 street value hand and you're OOP, you should be looking to check either the flop or the turn.

On the flop AQ is borderline. It's strong enough that a solver might play for stacks on clean runouts, but when all the money goes in against lower stakes opponent you're often not doing great.

OTTH:

Flop: Why are you checking a strong value hand when opponents are described as loose passive? I'm starting with a bet.

As played once your passive opponent bets what does that mean? If they're sufficiently passive then check-raising could very well be overplaying your hand. Usually when passive opponents take aggressive actions it indicates a strong hand.

So on the flop I would have preferred a bet, but if you're going to check probably check call against this opponent. Check raise is probably not horrible in a vacuum, but seems suboptimal against a loose passive.

Turn: As played on the flop, I would check turn, mainly looking to check call.

This is the key street you misplayed. Once the heart hits AQ is no longer strong enough to play for stacks unless a 4th heart comes. You need to exercise some pot control.

If you check turn and it checks through, it's very unlikely that your opponent has a flush and you can go for a large bet on the river.

As played since you bet turn, he's going to call a lot both with and without a flush. So you have no idea where you're at.

River: As played you're now skating on thin ice. You overplayed the hand on previous streets and you're now in no man's land. You're trying to do damage control on the river and there're no great options.

I would likely block bet for like $150 then fold to a jam.

No, I'm just sizing way up with value, and not x/r'ing with in-between hands.

i kind of like checking the turn

it feels like maybe you xr your hand if someone calls his bet but if it folds to you closing the action you don't really want to raise

if you were going to pick an opponent to do this against, a station / rec you have no sample or history with that you dont play with regularly seems like the best candidate

I also don’t understand the check-raise, the other two players folded, you’re already heads-up, but out of position, facing a more than 1/2 pot bet.
Just call

When you check-raise a big bet, that looks so so strong I would say fold to the population. But villain didn’t fold, he called, I think we should slow down now.

If you had called the flop, I might be check-raising the turn or pot-size donking to represent the flush.

But now check the turn - you’re just asking to get trapped by the guy that keeps calling you down. Wonder what villain does if you check?

As played, do you have too much invested?
Maybe a shove goes through
xr flop/barrel turn/shove river is a strong line
If you could make it look accidental flashing the ace of hearts… I’m amazed at how that 3rd barrel comes through sometimes.

But if you don’t want to live on the edge:
Check the river & don’t be surprised if v checks it back. Not too many hands can be sure they’re ahead with this board.

Yeh I'd just lead the flop - probably checks through alot 4 ways, x/r this spot looks very strong - wouldn't want to play AQ this way but can think of other hands I'd take this line. OTT you're better off betting bigger - we're looking for one more bet out of Qx and some of his Qx has a heart with it making it even more of a call for him. As played on the river we need to check - I'd prob x/f as you would need him to turn Qx into a bluff which isn't happening.

x/r seems fine, but I would x/r 2-pair or better or strong draws. You could also x/r a pure bluff or a low pair or weak draw on a dryish board. Seems like an overplay with TPTK.

You managed to get a lot of value from a loose passive idiot.

Nice hand.

FWIW, we could have potted it on the flop, checked turn, and if V checked back, over-bet the river for like $325.

We would have won $10 less, but with more clairvoyance on the river.

Nice. You've got to love when your opponent gives away money by making the tiny "bluff" to a size that it only folds out hands it's already beating.

I mean, your 1/3 NL game simply plays far differently than mine thanks to these huge effective and fluctuating stacks that I just very rarely see in my game, so my 2 cents (that many would consider useless in the first place) may be even more useless here, but...

I would just limp in as per my style. Position means something in poker, and we ended up OOP to all 3 opponents (in the LJ no less, lol). Overall I lean to playing small pots when I have the positional disadvantage (or attempt to negate the positional disadvantage by playing very small SPRs, which a raise almost never accomplishes but a LRR can). But that's me and I'll be massively outvoted.

SPR is a fairly big 11. For me, this means I would pretty much never attempt to stack off with just one pair. The board is drawy and I'm assuming we're up against some ABCish straightforward calling stations. So I'd likely just do 3 smallish bet/folds on non-stoopid runouts. Check/raising, which immediately puts stacks in play, is overplaying our hand, imo... but others could perhaps reasonably argue that this higher variance line is also more +EV against this dood.

What is our turn thinking? This has to be one of the worse turn cards as the flush got there as well as an OESD. Is he a super station which will just calldown check/raises with UI Qx regardless of how stooopid the runout is? I'd probably just check here and make sure I'm not blown off my nut draw.

And now on the river his boats got there (although they don't seem to likely given the flop bet/call). I mean, I hate that we have just a 3/4 PSB left (I'm never in this spot due to flop play). But against a super calling station that is never going to bluff, i guess I wouldn't hate a $100 bet/fold targeting weaker Qx. I dunno, I don't play this deep with stacks this fluctuating with a Banana image against guys like this, perhaps I'm just missing huge value.

GcluelessbigstacknoobG

Block bet river. Don't cr flop with this hand deep and don't bet the turn.