I dislike both turn and river here. Andrew has already identified why checking turn is not a good play, and I think your hand is strong enough that you can raise river with the expectation of getting called by worse. Villain can definitely have Jx hands (AJ, QJ, JT) when they bet flop and then check turn, and since they’d be unlikely to slow down on turn with two pair or a set, the chances of them having caught up to a boat are minimal.

Pretty much the only advantage of checking turn is that you get to raise rivers like this for value slightly more frequently, and by failing to do so, you invalidate your decision to check behind on turn. There are a lot of mental game flaws creeping into this hand as well as strategic ones, since assuming villain has lots of FH hands on river is just grounded in fear. It’s definitely possible for them to bet-call river with worse than a flush, since it makes no sense for you to have a value hand on that river when you raise, unless you did exactly what you did, which was erroneously checking back a two pair or better hand.

DuckinDaDeck said
I don’t think your floating range on the flop, or at least your perceived floating range, has very many flush draws at all. At this stack depth I expect most players to shove or make a committing raise with the majority of their flush draws. If I’m checking a hand like Kx on the turn here it is to induce bluffs and hopefully get value from a wider range on the river.

Worth recognizing that we don’t have a lot of Kx+ to raise/get in on flop, so it’s valid to call here with FDs if we’re calling with our Kx also, IMO. I probably would just have no raising range on that flop, since it’s just hard to have one without it being inherently unbalanced.

DuckinDaDeck said
Very good point Ginger. I’ll cold call some KQ/KJ on the button off 25bb but I don’t see compelling reasons to raise this flop with them. So what would my value raising range be?

Nothing other than slowplayed AA? I don’t think I’m ever flatting 88 vs hijack.

Damn it balance, why you be so hard? I don’t think we need to be perfectly balanced with our raises here because we’re mainly looking to fold out A highs and air, with decent equity against villain’s continue range and some fold equity shoving the turn. Still, I don’t love polarizing our range with so few value hands against a competent villain.

What suited combos are we cold calling button with? ATs-A9s,A5s,KTs+,QTs+,JTs,T9s, maybe 98s? That would probably be my loosest range, and I’d definitely go tighter and/or shove some of that vs aggro blinds.

On this board that’s 7 flush draws to 3 value combos (assuming we 3bet AA 50% which is what I’ve been doing at this stack depth recently using an RNG). Hard to make an argument for bluffing >2x our value combos…

Personally, I want some bluffs here. Best approach may be to pick a couple of combos of flush draws to raise. Do we like picking the lowest SDV hands with backdoor straight draws, JTs and T9s, maybe add ATs for our best NFD, and float the rest of our FDs?  

I think you’re massively over-complicating your strategy. In any situation like this where it’s really hard to find a way to balance a specific range, you’re most often going to benefit hugely by just eliminating that range altogether.

I would imagine that on a fairly neutral-to-static flop texture like this one, the EV difference between having a raising range here and not having one is almost nothing. None of your value hands on this flop need to raise for the purposes of equity denial, and you’re shallow enough that you can still get it in for value on later streets, while building a bluffing range is super difficult simply because your preflop flatting range is pretty tight.

I think you’re going to come much closer to a balanced/optimized flop defense strategy here by just purely focusing on calling enough hands, rather than trying to adopt a raising range. It’s fine to just raise your trashy stuff for exploitative reasons if you think villain is c-betting too much, but you don’t have to be balanced with it.

I also don’t think you need to use an RNG to randomize your flatting frequency, either. I think you’re likely missing out on good exploit spots by doing so. There should usually be some kind of gameflow/table image consideration that would push you into a pure 3-bet or flat-call approach in each specific spot.

DuckinDaDeck said

For sure, I am usually basing decisions like this on gameflow and my perception of villain’s range. RNG only comes into play when I’ve got no other information and I feel like the decision is close. I don’t think I’ll use it as part of my long term strategy but I think it’s helpful for some decisions at the moment, for the exact reason that I do tend to over-complicate my decision process and its a good reminder that sometimes two options run really close in EV.  

I think it’s fine to use it as a way to make close decisions in that it does make the decision itself easier, but it can make future street decisions more difficult as you progress through the game tree, and it can become a crutch over time. I think people vastly overestimate human beings’ capacity to effectively execute mixed strategies, and you’ll also need to be careful that using the RNG itself doesn’t take time and energy away from focusing on decisions at the table. I imagine it’s tough to do while multi-tabling.