AK Hand 3

60, fold to a raise.

Grunch:

PRE - seems fine. I'll sometimes just flat AK in the blinds, for whatever reasons. It's probably terrible to not 3B. Your sizing seems fine. You might be able to go $5 more.

FLOP - a small c-bet on the monotone board seens fine. I could argue for checking too. I prefer checking to c-betting, but whatever.

TURN - checking seems fine when we get there the way you did. I would have preferred to flat call pre, and / or check flop, so that if V shows weakness we could start a bluff here. Your line is the reverse. We're basically ending our bluff here.

RIVER - I'd probably check-evaluate. Probably folding to a big bet. Would be sorely tempted to x/r a small bet.

Always looking for info….
Pre is fine, but check this flop to see what villain does. Little cBets are in vogue, but they don’t tell you much when called. Why? They will almost always be called without narrowing the range or telling you much.

cBets are often fos, people do it automatically without reason and people call without reason. Make them bet, because they will call with anything.

If v bets, we’re likely behind and will have to evaluate. If v checks behind, we are likely ahead and now we might get aggressive on the turn.

As played, I like hitchins97’s advice to bet/fold

FWIW, one of the reasons I like sitting on ~shortstack of $200 in my 1/3 NL game is cuz it really makes hands like AK fairly trivially easy to play. We limp in to hopefully see a raise and some calls, and then we can simply 3bet to a size where we can shove any flop (perhaps slowplaying A/K flops). There's huge dead money relative to stacks to go after (i.e. the risk versus reward is good), we put the opponents to a couple of tough decisions both preflop and flop, and meanwhile we always realize our equity. It massively simplifies things. For the expert player, this probably comes at the expense of EV. But for the beginner / non-expert, prolly not so much. Just sayin'.

I find the $500 stack so awkward in this spot. The 3bet is going to setup an SPR where stacks are going to trivially be in play postflop, especially thanks to being OOP, so I'd really prefer offering poor IO of like 8:1... but this would mean a raise to about $70 preflop, which might be a little too large to get action from hands we want to get action from.

Anyhoo, as played ~awkward SPR of 4 in that we might find ourselves quickly uncomfortably committed.

When someone calls a decent sized 3bet, the hands I immediately mostly put them on are stuff like QQ/JJ... so this ain't a good flop for that, not to mention we don't have a club. We're also reverse dominated by other very common stuff like AQ/KQ/AJ/KJ. A bet could get TT- to fold... but it's not as if these hands are going to autobet this flop if checked to. But otherwise, this is a meh board as it hits too much of his range that ain't folding (at least to one bet). Think I check.

I think I'm cool with giving up on the turn.

Against someone labelled as straightforward, I wouldn't check the river to induce a bluff by a missed draw (which an aggro player probably would have considered on the turn). His turn check indicates he likely has a very weak hand, like TT-, maybe some Jx (with AJ/KT really being the only hands that are likely ahead). Our hand kinda looks like AK. So I think we have a very small value bet here attempting to get paid off by a very small hand. So I'd go quite small, like $50 into $180 just attempting to get that crying call, and I'm folding to a raise versus anyone described as straightforward.

GcluelessNLnoobG

I think hero played it well. Now check and call a small bet. You got to showdown cheap with the small cbet on the flop. I hope V had AQ.

Against straightforward players who are unlikely to bluff the river when checked to, we're much better off doing the betting ourselves, imo. Yes, sometimes we'll run into better (BTW, AQ is better), but they will sometimes call small bets with worse (and these hands would mostly auto check back if we give them the chance). Bet/folding thinly on the river against ABC players is a bread and butter play.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Without reading replies: check and expect him to touch his stack then check back AQ.