I’ll start by saying that I think the preflop flat was a mistake and that 3betting to GII would be a lot better. I think flatting is okay vs. UTG or at ~ >=33bb, but we’re too short here for me to like it. The villain is a slightly losing player over 700 MTTs at $29 ABI, but we’ve only played 37 hands so reads are pretty meaningless (24/16/0 with EP RFI 0/7 and MP RFI 4/10). I have the impression from bet sizing in previous pots that they are using the deep stack to apply a lot of pressure, but not enough hands to change my decision making based on that hunch.

PokerStars – 30000/60000 Ante 7500 NL – Holdem – 9 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

MP+1: 15.89 BB
Hero (MP+2): 25.92 BB
CO: 10.95 BB
BTN: 16.44 BB
SB: 9.2 BB
BB: 50.39 BB
UTG: 20.8 BB
UTG+1: 37.01 BB
MP: 108.66 BB

9 players post ante of 0.13 BB, SB posts SB 0.5 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 2.62 BB) Hero has T T

fold, fold, MP raises to 2.21 BB, fold, Hero calls 2.21 BB, fold, fold, fold, fold

Flop: (7.05 BB, 2 players) 2 8 A
MP bets 2.06 BB, Hero calls 2.06 BB

Turn: (11.16 BB, 2 players) J
MP checks, Hero checks

River: (11.16 BB, 2 players) J
MP bets 8.48 BB, Hero ?

I feel like the only hands this bet size represents are Jacks and flushes that were trying to check-raise the turn. If villain doesn’t open KJo and QJo from MP1, their only Jacks are KJ,QJ,JT,J9 of hearts. Even if they raise both offsuit hands, they still only have 16 combos of Jacks. I don’t want to ignore the possibility of a flush but it can be heavily discounted because they don’t need to check-raise to get stacks in by the river, so they have less reason to risk missing value by attempting one on the turn. I can’t be certain that villain doesn’t bet this large with strong Aces but I don’t often see that on this runout and would be surprised to see Ax worse than AK if I call.

I will have stronger hands and better bluff-catchers in my range on this river (hands with K,Q or T of ), so I don’t think I have to call TcTx here. The fact that my range is capped after checking back the turn and my expectation that villain’s value range is quite narrow leads me to think a call is winning more than often enough to be profitable. Thoughts?