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Even if this villain's first thought is "Oh no, he has an ace!", he is still calling you with KK here.

First off, this villain seems like a poor player. All of his bets/raises are way too small. Do you really think he is going to make a laydown when you bet 3/4 of the pot on the river here?

Don't bluff at fish.

That being said, your line does not look legit even to a thinking player. What hand could you have which includes an A? AQ/AK of hearts? He could have the Q or K of hearts in his hand. Unless you were raising 6X BB with all sorts of trash, I don't see you holding many other hands with an A. He probably doesn't even realize how badly he is underbetting the pot, so no way he believes a non-suited AK of heart.

Out of curiosity, what did you think his less than 1/2 pot bets signified? To me the most probable scenarios are:
1. he is a fish with AK of hearts
2. he is a fish with AA and figures you squarely on a lower pair, and wants to bleed you slowly
3. he is a fish with KK and figures you sqaurely on a big pair which is either way behind or way ahead of him

Yeah, he's gonna make a "crying" call even if he has KK or QQ. He just doesn't seem like a sophistacted player, and your line is not convincing. If you already had a hand, you wouldn't be check calling small bets on the flop and turn. Now when the A hits and you bet, he may not like it, but he's calling. It's just too obvious of a bluffing opportunity.

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In online poker I agree with you for the most part, but if you play live enough you see different things. The average players at this stake in live games are usually nervous and are not taking bet size to pot ratio seriously enough. They usually don't even know how much is in the pot. This is one of the reasons why live poker has much worse players at each corresponding level than online. It is not unusual for people to bet like this live, but your point is semi-valid and understood.

Another thing to be thinking about is that the decent players at this level are generally pretty weak/tight. I also don't think most players are beating this game in the long run including that description of a "decent" player for live 2/5.