Nut flush draw

That's fair. But I definitely don't think we should call river, opening the door to consider x/r'ing when V takes this line.

Yes, he could have JX at some frequency, and we'd be punting when he does. At low stakes, V's line doesn't look like a very strong hand, making me less concerned about blockers, and more reliant on the sizing tells which are pervasive among the low stakes player pool. His turn bet in particular looks weak.

It looks to me like hero's line is face-up as a missed draw or some sort of SDV, making V feel comfortable going for some thin value with this 2/3-ish pot sizing.

We can't wait for better opportunities in tournaments when we can't rebuy / reload and the blinds constantly go up. But patience tends to be highly rewarded in cash games.

Not totally disagreeing with you about this hand specifically. I think it's worth considering a 3B pre. However I also think it's worth considering a fold under some circumstances. We should probably play everything as 3B or fold when we're not closing the action. With so little info in the OP, it's not entirely clear that raise > call > fold.

I agree that there's a lot of value in taking pots down pre-flop / pre-rake, and that a 5x 3B works better than a 3x-4x 3B. If I was going to 3B here, I'd probably go even larger than 5x, considering the suspiciously small open size over two limps.

But I think the point DEKE was making is that when our 3B gets called, we'll be playing the rest of the hand OOP with a speculative holding in a 3BP, and our middling suited aces don't play well when we make weak top pairs or strong second pairs, or just whiff, which will happen more often than flush-over-flushing someone.

Even good players will have difficulty determining when their hand is good enough to bet for value or bad enough it should be turned into a bluff in that scenario. We'll often end up playing our hand like a bluff-catcher by check-calling a lot, making the EV of our 3B heavily reliant upon our post-flop hand-reading skills and ability to exploit our opponent's leaks.

You have a mediocre hand OOP.
If I raise the button, I want to have position against a mediocre hand. That’s kinda the goal

Even though the button range is often wide, and sizing poor this time for sure with two limpers, you are not in a great situation, acting first against a crowd.

Playing a linear range, this hand gets 3bet, while playing a polarized range it’s a call; not good or bad enough to 3bet. So, I honestly don’t think there’s a big EV difference whether you fold, call or raise.

On the flop, I like playing fast with this kind of semi-bluff, the board is favorable. Hadn’t thought about donking, but I think I like that.
I would check-raise the flop to $75. If he calls the overbet, I’m probably done.

I really like early aggression. Some players are just waiting for a bet, so they can fold.

Never in love with being the first caller of a raise preflop with a speculative hand, and OOP to boot, but to this very small sizing which will no doubt create a multiway pot (which we're cool with), I'm fine with preflop.

I'm cool with checking the flop and seeing what happens. If villain is decent, then he should really only be cbetting some fairly strong hands or draws this multiway, and since we block a lot of the strong draws, this is often just a strong hand. So I'd lean to just calling this bet against what is likely a strong hand and hope for overcalls to pad the pot.

If this were HU where most cbet far too wide then I'd lean to getting more aggro with a check/raise versus what is often a very weak hand.

ETA: Think we have just enough of a hand on the turn to call a 1/2 PSB getting 3:1. Not in love with this being OOP to a decent player, but we'll need just a ~1/4 PSB to get paid off on the river to ~breakeven, plus it's possible our Ace outs are good. Not sure a check/raise makes sense (we just check/called a monster on the flop with others behind us?) plus my initial flop read is that villain is strong betting into this many opponents.

ETA#2: And I also check/fold the river. I can understand our concern for the hand as we kinda played it like every other losing player in the room would, but not every hand / decision has obvious reciprocality deviations and sometimes it just goes like that. While there are alternatives, I think the whole line is defensible, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

Just realized I said x/r the river in this last post, whereas I initially said we could donk river.

Just went back to check the eff stack and do some math. OP has $335 behind getting to the river, with $143 in the pot.

Since we don't have much SDV if V checks back, and we could lose to better AX, I think a donk works better than an x/r here. I don't think we need to donk huge on this run-out, and based on V's bet sizing pre, on flop, and on turn. I think he folds better AX to a 2/3 pot donk at a fair frequency when the J pairs on the end.

It would be a disaster to go for a x/r by jamming $335 into $243 and getting looked up by AX that happened to get curious enough to call off, being laid almost 2.5 to 1. I'd rather bet-fold $100 than punt $335.

He bet into three players on the flop and barreled turn. The given read was that he seems decent. I don't know why you would expect him to arrive to the river with a bunch of A high no draw hands when we hold the As.

Respectfully, you play higher stakes. I think you give low stakes players too much credit for playing "balanced" when they're simply not. You overlook what I deem to be pretty glaring and ubiquitous tells among the low stakes player pool.

Starting from pre:

1. V opens BTN to $10 over two limps in a 1/3 game.

$10 would be a smallish RFI (no limps) in most 1/3 games. It's comically small over two limps, when V will enjoy a positional advantage post. This is why I said I'd be playing more 3B or fold after we develop some reads. But I wouldn't hate it if hero 3B here, even readless.

2. V on BTN c-bets just a smidge over 1/2 pot when three opponents check to him on a fairly wet and dynamic board.

If V was hoping to induce a light 3B with his small raise size pre, that didn't work, and he'd most likely start sizing up here with all his TP+, particularly on this sort of board texture. His small raise pre now looks weak, and this c-bet sizing also looks weak.

3. After his flop c-bet gets called, V barrels a turn brick for less than 2x his flop bet size.

This one is HUGE. When they use a bet size that's 2x their last bet, give or take, it's almost always FOS. If V had a thick but vulnerable value hand here, and he c-bet the flop somewhat small, and got called, he'd be sizing to the goddam moon on a turn brick.

4. After going 1/2 pot, 1/2 pot, V uses the bad-reg sizing of 2/3 pot when the top card on board pairs.

At low stakes, this is the bet sizing they use when they're bluffing or going for thin value when their opponents check-call flop and turn.

V's line from pre to turn would lead me to expect a chunky donk on this board-pairing top card to be very +EV, if for no other reason than our landing range on the river is going to be weighted towards JX for value and busted draws that most low-stakes players would simply check-fold.

I'm not only expecting him to have ace-high. His line is suggestive of busted draws and SDV that doesn't want to play a huge pot. We can get a range fold if we donk river for a chunky size after x/c'ing flop and turn. Even the bad regs know that x/c-x/c-donk is a super-under-bluffed and nutty line.

A description of an opponent being "decent" at low stakes may mean he's only slightly losing, or break-even at best. And with apologies to OP, I take such generic reads with a large dose of salt. "Decent" could simply mean OP hasn't seen V punt or spew. That doesn't make him a crusher with no obvious tells.

Have you ever stopped to think about whether or not the people who post here are winning players, or how they compare to the pool? Off the top of my head, I can think of MAYBE 4-5 people who post here regularly and who I think are probably winning at low stakes.

As a final side-note to this spot - a lot of low-stakes players will find the river bluff with the naked NF blocker when the flush draw comes in. But very few low stakes players will find the river bluff with a busted draw when the flush misses and the board pairs. If someone decided to bluff at this with A9cc on a river brick, I'd hate it. But when the J pairs, I'd freaking love it.

The AA hand and this hand aren't the same. I don't see the irony.

I told you what kind of range I was giving V. His line is suggestive of SDV (1P lower than JJ), and busted draws.

Low stakes players will often find this sort of line when they're IP as the PFR, with all sorts of hands. They'll raise pre with whatever, and monkey c-bet the flop when action checks to them, hoping to just take down the pot.

When 2 of 3 opponents fold, they barrel turn, hoping it looks strong enough to get their remaining opponent to fold. When their opponent calls, they figure whatever they have is no good, so they fire the last bullet, but typically for a smallish size, trying to give themselves a good price on their bluff.

The main indicator is the bet sizing, considering the board texture, and how they'd typically play thick but vulnerable value.

When the size is middling and not leading up to a jam, and especially when the size is roughly double the size of the previous bet, and very much when the river bet sizing is 50%-2/3 pot, it's often the case that they're bluffing, or turning some hand with a sliver of SDV into a bluff, or just going super-thin.

Notice that in the AA hand, I bet 1/4 pot on flop, and 70% pot on turn, setting up a 1/2 pot river jam. Here, V is betting 1/2 pot on flop, slightly less than 1/2 pot on turn, and 2/3 pot on river, less than all-in. My turn bet was 7x my flop bet. His is barely 2x.

I was using the small c-bet sizing to cap my opponents by giving them an opportunity to raise. This V is using a larger c-bet in the hopes his opponents fold. My turn and river bet sizes were to get max value from my opponents' capped ranges. His turn and river bet sizes were an attempt to make his bluff efficient, in the event his opponents wouldn't fold.

I was targeting worse for value. At best, he's trying to get better to fold.

Often enough, he'll be bluffing with the best hand, without realizing it. A river donk when the top card pairs will be perceived as fairly credible when V has a lower 1P and the flush draw bricks.

We also could have donked or x/r'd turn, depending on the card, and found another path to victory.

This seems optimistic to me. I think his range includes a lot of Jx that aren't necessarily thrilled to stack off prior to the river, but that bet for value nonetheless. Even if his range does contain a lot of weak SDV/busted draws like you seem to think, my point still remains.

The Ac is not the card we want to have in our hand when we bluff river. That one card blocks 12 potential combos of missed flush draws (likely river folds), plus many more combos of ace high BDFD that could have been "monkey stabbing" into 3 players on the flop like you said (and folding river), if that's what he was doing. Taking an aggressive action on any street prior to the river would have been better with our exact hand.

This is one of those times where I would encourage you to do a little work with solvers, maybe just watching some videos from content creators who utilize them.

A common pattern observed with solvers is that nut flush draws often make good semi-bluffs on the flop and turn, but not on the river. The reason is that on the flop and turn blocking the NFD when you are bluffing is not necessarily a bad thing. That's less combos of strong draws that are likely to call our raise. However on the river, this is no longer the case.

On the river when we're bluffing we want our opponent to have a missed flush draw, which is likely to fold. So the missed NFD is often one of the worst hand choices to bluff the river with. I just did a quick search, and this article doesn't go over this exact sort of spot, but explains general solver insights about how blockers effect our decisions:

https://blog.gtowizard.com/understanding-blockers-in-poker/

I'm not saying you need to play like a solver in low stakes games, but we can still learn from them which hands make better river bluffs or river bluffcatcher calls.