Turn showdown value hand into a bluff?

the way i see it it's like this.
(1) you can check and play the way that you did assuming that you have solid SDV vs villain. this seems reasonable, and you will sometimes hit your 6 outs too which is nice.

(2) you can bet for thin value on the flop and plan to check back the turn and call a blank river. this works if you think your opponent might float you and i think this is most likely when you are in a later position than MP. however it also seems like a reasonable plan. as played on this river i would not be betting since the board connects too much with his range.

(3) you can bet the flop and plan to turn your hand into a bluff on later streets. on this flop texture I'm pretty sure (haven't checked this) that equities between you and villain are quite close compared to a less wet texture. this means that we have less FE since he has more draws (overcards included btw). if we bet flop we should plan to barrel off on blank runouts. if we think he is stationy and will call any draws we can bomb flop and make smaller bets later; if we think he is likely to call wider vs smaller bets then we can bet small early to keep his range wide and then bomb turn. this is interesting, but i believe that in order to play this way your hand should have potential to improve to the nuts and AK just doesn't in this case, so i don't like option (3) in this case.

as you have played it on flop and turn, you are trying to see a cheap showdown, like our option (1). on the river you contradict this. so yes i do think you should check behind on the river given how you have played it.

also just because his fold to CBET is only 50 over 300 hands doesn't mean we can't valuebet him thin. if he is tight preflop then this changes since he has stronger postflop ranges, but i doubt this is the case.

hope that helps

Amazing post. Will re-read it several more times to remember it for all times. About 1. option: if my plan is to check all 3 streets behind, players tend to think that I'm giving up and try to bluff me out of the hand. If scary card comes OTT like Q and it didn't improve me, but villain bets b/c we checked back OTF we do think 1) he bluffs, 2) he improved, so still a call OTT IP or just let it go? If turn comes blank, smth like 2c still fold? How does things change up if ott villain checks again, we check also behind and he stab OTR, fold? IMO if he checks flop, turn and bets OTR, he probably has it, otherwise if he would like to bluff, he would have done that OTT. Thoughts?

if you're checking all 3 streets behind then your thought process is "i have SDV and want to get to SD as cheaply as possible". that doesn't mean we can't call a stab or 2, depending on board texture and villain's tendencies. so if you think they try to bluff you off then simply call some of your better hands for getting into that spot. for example here, if you DO play AK this way (i.e. don't bet flop for val+protection) then it is one of your best hands for checking back, so you can happily call his turn stab as you did. if the turn is a Q then it's not so nice here because that hits his range (at least i'd expect an nl2 SB to call here with a range like this {JJ-22, AQs-A7s, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, T9s, 98s, AQo-ATo, KJo+}, maybe tighter maybe looser - we don't know). So i think we like turns that brick (somewhat), like 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 that are not :spade:. with that said in this particular hand it probably makes more sense to bet flop for value and protection - we probably have 6 outs anyway which is ok. Basically, high cards favour SB in this spot since you can see on this flop that ~70% of the range i gave him is simply overcards on this flop. so he improves on a Q. we could call once if we expect him to stab but folding won't be a problem. much better to call on one of those bricks though.

i don't really know what to do if he checks again in this case because looking at it, this board is going to be getting much worse on later streets so it's very likely to bring cards we don't like (T/J/Q/ spades, backdoor FD, turns and rivers that will give him weird straights with his PP etc). so basically if we are playing a SDV line like checking back then we shouldn't be betting. in this hand if i made it to the turn checking and then villain checks i'm going to start hating myself for checking flop and not just bombing it and taking it down there. anyway, if we check back and then he stabs river it really feels like we should fold. he's played a SDV/give up line all the way down to the river and then he bets it looks like he hit something. so yeah i agree he probably would have bluffed earlier.