in which i call/call/call

no chopping ace. yer rite sir.

[Holden97]

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I would raise the flop.

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And the turn

Seems pretty reasonable to me esp. given the fact that the board has trips on the turn. Your A-high could be good. Perhaps the LAG paired his 6 (or rivered you with an 8).

Assuming your read on this guy is accurate, in that he'd shoot at pots when the board has low cards (i.e. he thinks you raised with high cards), then a call down is good here.

I would think that raising the river would be a situation where only a better hand will call or 3-bet (most of the time). Seems like unnecessary spewage.

What's wrong with calling down? We can also see his hand for the next time he donks at us?

[detruncate]

I don't hate collecting a bet on all streets when I'm ahead and minimizing my losses when behind. His stats suggest that he'll be very aggressive post flop, but I don't know what that means in practice (assuming it's a accurate reflection of his game). Does he bet any flop? Just scary boards? Is he a maniac? Will he fold facing aggresion when he's on a stone cold bluff?

The problem is that Villain has a much better idea about what I have than I do about what he has. He will relentlessly value bet me, and I don't know how to get away from my hand when I'm behind. I need to know that he's going to push hard with nothing if I'm going to find a value raise somewhere and not fold to further aggression.

One of my most unfortunate tendencies is that I sometimes spew bets vs presumably aggressive opponents when I have a marginal hand in a small pot. The work of hours can be given away in a few seconds.

Villain needs as little as a flush draw + pair outs to value bet/raise me on the flop. A pair has me putting in multiple bets in a small pot with a marginal draw. We'll almost certainly be 3-bet when behind. On the other hand, we're not going to be able to extract full value when ahead since we can only push A-high so hard and will often not know where we stand. We also risk pushing out a worse hand that would otherwise put in bets incorrectly. Later on it's even worse since we have to be a favouite much more often for the raise to be correct, especially when we're not happy folding to a 3-bet.

I'm simply not prepared to take a more aggressive line that doesn't include the possibility of finding a fold somewhere until I have a better idea about how Villain plays. However, this was not about me telling other people how to approach this. Should I be willing to extend myself further with only tentative stats to go by? This is an important question for me as I'm often readless or nearly so.

Thanks everyone.

NH.

I would raise the flop and maybe check/fold the turn, because I think a medium pocket (66s to 99s) is a wide range of his hand here.
He could be just beting his bad draw, but he chose a good spot. IMHO the pot is to small for calling down. Your investing 2BB to get 7.5BB. I don't see you ahead more than 27% of the time.

My first reaction was that you should raise the flop because this obviously isnt a wa/wb moment. But the pot is so small that if you think he is going to bluff often enough the best thing to do is to call it down.
Nice Hand.