Facing a slight overbet on River after playing AQs passively OOP.

My thought process:

PF - Villains range is tightest it would be as UTG raiser, but he seems to be raising a lot, so I'm guessing he's still got ~25% hands here. I could squeeze such a wide range, but if called by the PFR, I'm not in a great spot OOP in a now bloated pot vs a good, aggressive opponent. I'd also have to fold to a 4bet, so I felt more comfortable playing this big suited A passively with a short-stack in between us.

Flop - This 15 into 40 bet is so small and he could be doing it with many hands I beat and I have two overcards and bd straightdraw. Although he did decide to c-bet multiway, so that could indicate he actually has something, but he had been quite aggressive so far, so seems a bit early to give him too much credit. X/folding this hand seems reasonable as well.

Turn - V could be barrelling thick value hands, Ax hands, gutshots and FDs. I now have TPGK against an aggressive player, but x/r seems too strong, calling and getting to showdown seems to be the best option.

River - Overbet by V. Doesn't seem like thin value with this sizing. So could be bluff, flush or trips/full-house. I've given him rope the whole hand and he does seem capable of triple barrelling. If he were to be triple barrelling, this seems like the bet-sizing he might go for against me (assuming he doesn't think I'm a calling station and that he may have noticed I played aggressively in the only other hand I played).

Do I beat any of their value? probably not, but perhaps willing to do this AJ?

Is villain capable? yes

Did I give him rope? yes

Is the size significant? yes, for this game in absolute terms, and an overbet to the pot

Do they have bluffs in their range? the only intuitive bluffs are 68s, 64s, T9s, T8s, but might not be opening all of those hands.

Against an active opener and some dead money from a shortstack I'd probably lean to a 3bet preflop. Although I guess being suited our hand will play a lot better postflop than offsuit so I guess a call can't be horrible.

Pretty speculative call on the flop with pretty much nothing, imo.

If we called the river then we played the turn/river fine against an aggro player who recognizes that these Aces are supposed to hit him a lot more than us. ETA: Or is the question whether we should check/jam the river for value? I mean, I guess we can rep some busted draws but otherwise a competent player might even be able to get away from most worse Ax (although I guess it really depends on what our image is).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Pre - Your logic makes sense to me.

Flop - Either call or fold is reasonable. With some kind of BDFD I might be inclined to x/r an aggressive V, this board is better for us because we should have more Jx and more monster draws like T9dd, all the sets and J7s, 75s should be in our range so against a decent UTG player I'm x/r this flop a lot. If we had AQss, we could keep barreling on any spade, ace, king, queen or ten. Without the backup equity, it's a float or fold and probably about even between the two.

Turn - We didn't float the flop to fold when we hit a pair. We're too middling to x/r.

River - No reason to lead, we want him to keep firing with his bluffs and what he might think is value. Given the passive line we took, he could believe that we have Jx and could be seeking value with as weak as KK/QQ. He could easily have ATss and lower in his range which I think might play this way. Our hand is underrepped, and our read is that V is capable of bluffing, I think we have to pay it off. An obvious bluff candidate I think you missed is KQss. When we xc/xc/x, our line looks a lot like a J, which should inspire an attempt to bluff and to seek thin value.

Grunch:

PRE - I'd 3B AQs against this sort of V, especially when there's dead money in the pot from the MP caller.

If we make it $75 or $90, and V folds, but MP jams, it's just an easy call. But that 3B puts a ton of pressure on V, knowing there's a short stack with only $110 left behind him.

FLOP - When we're OOP against an aggro V and completely whiff, I'd probably just fold to his c-bet. But I could see calling on this fairly wet board.

TURN - Pretty straightforward check-call.

RIVER - Pretty straightforward check-call. If V has AK, a flush, or a boat, he's just getting paid.

I might actually consider a check-jam here. There's a non-zero percent chance he calls with AT. I probably wouldn't though, because there's also a non-zero percent chance he snaps with AK.

My thought process would be:

1. Card removal suggests he's got very few combos of better AX.
2. He couldn't have the NFD that makes top pair on the turn because the Ad came out on the river.
3. He probably would have slowed down and checked back the Ah turn with his non-nut flush draws, at least some of the time.
4. If he had 2P+ on the turn, I'd expect him to over-bet, not bet 2/3 pot. If he flopped a set, I'd expect him to bet bigger on both flop and turn.
5. I'd expect him to bet bigger with the nut flush or a boat.
6. V is aggro and deep stacked. He could be opening VERY wide, and triple-barreling because he believes he has the range/nut advantage.
7. Our hand is super under-repped, to the point that other than a rivered flush, I don't know what better hands we could ever have here.

Wow, I really appreciate the well-explained responses here, thanks!

Spoiler:

I was having trouble deciding between calling and folding and didn't even consider raising for value, so I appreciate that idea - maybe points to me being overly cautious that that didn't even cross my mind and I was having difficulty finding a call.

@docvail - you make a good point about "what better hands could we ever have here..." In these cases, I would need to be super sure that the Villain was under-bluffing in order to fold? I've had it drilled into my head that LLSN folks aren't bluffing when they bet big on the river, but this Villain is obviously not your standard loose/passive player. And it was helpful reading your thought process.

@Yamihere good call on KsQs as another obvious bluff candidate.

@gobbledygeek yeah, the flop call was maybe a stretch in the first place and I definitely see the merit in 3b pre.

easy call as played

There's a lot of discussion about certain spots being over- or under-bluffed. But what I think is often missed is whether or not we think our specific opponent is likely to be over- or under-bluffing.

Even though the board is scary, and this may seem like an under-bluffed spot, just based on your description, he's aggro, not passive, so I'd lean towards thinking he's over-bluffing. His line and bet sizing in general would also lead me to think he's over-bluffing.

If he's opening UTG and barreling off with T high, he's definitely over-bluffing, since he presumably didn't block diamonds, unless he's really OOL and opening UTG with off-suit Tx. Presumably he had T9s, (or T8s, which is even more OOL) that bricked the straight draw. He's way too LAG if he's trying to run a three street bluff on a two-tone board, without the flush suit, with two overs to his hand on board. He could have just checked back the flop and started his bluff on the turn if you checked again.

Just looking at it logically, if he has a hand that beats ours, he MUST have been bluffing at some point in the hand. If he was bluffing on early streets and improved to a boat or flush on the river, he'd want to get max value, and would bet huge.

The other thing to differentiate is what constitutes a big bet for the stakes or relative to the pot, versus what constitutes a big bet for us or V. His 180 bet into 160 pot is an over-bet, but not a huge over-bet. It may be a big bet at 1/3, and it may be a big bet to us, starting with $400, but it's a small bet for a big swinging aggro dick sitting on a 900+ stack.

Many low stakes players, even good ones, will bet smaller with their bluffs and bigger with their value. If you've got $335 behind going to the river, and he's nutted, we'd think he'd either go somewhat bigger, like 1.5x-2x pot, to get value from your strong hands, or a bit smaller, like 1/2-2/3 pot, to get value from your weak hands.

Like, put yourself in his place, with AJ or KQdd. Our range getting to the river looks like flush draws that got there, straight draws that missed, or some 1P/2P combos that hate the run-out and won't call an over-bet. We shouldn't have much Ax here. Wouldn't his nutted hands want to target our flushes with a larger bet? If he just has AK, and is worried about us trapping with a flush, wouldn't he bet smaller?

His sizing looks like he's just trying to fold out JX or some PP's lower than JX. But his line is FOS. The only thing stopping me from raising is the uncertainty that he could possibly be over-playing AK, and we'd be value-owning ourselves.