$100 Flighted LIVE $100K Guarantee Tourney

This hand turned out to be one of the more interesting hands I have played in a long time. It was a combo of leveling war and bluff opprtunity mixed in with me trying to find best line.

Let me preface by saying that one of the things I am trying to work on my game this year is to recognize more opportunities to bluff. Bluffing is, in my opinion, a difficult play to do well and consistently. Many good players I know don’t try it very often. It takes a mix of a lot of factors and in the end you have to be able get stuffed and not lose sleep over whether you made the right play or not. So any thoughts on whether this was a good spot or not to try this would be appreciated.

Villain info: He was a very good player. Understood the game – probably Level 3 thinker. I have seen him thin value bet; bluff in position, bluff out of position, make good reads and semi-bluff. He was a player and a thinker. He just had a 3 way AI with AK vs 99 and TT and tripled up so he is doing very well and in a good mood.

Relevant hands from V from earlier:
1. Saw him 3 bet in position with 3d5d, hit trips on flop and milked it.
2. 3 bet with K8o on BTN and barreled whole way but got called down by a station and lost a big pot (this was a tad reckless and not great spot to bluff IMO for this V as the guy he was trying to bluff was calling everything and very sticky).

Villains view of me: I was very card dry this tourney but I did manage to have a few opportunities to stay afloat. My image is definitely TAG and probably leaning toward like a VPIP (if it were online) of 12-15%. I made one or two 3 bets in position and C-Bet very often if it was not multi-way. I did face aggro a few times to some of C-bets and laid my hand down. Villain saw me showdown QTs on BTN earlier. So all in all, I am likely a TAG in his eyes and probably a thoughtful player in his eyes but hard to tell as I was not involved in many dicey spots – most of mine were straight forward.

Blinds: 300/600/75 and they were going up in like 3 minutes or so.
Stacks: Effective stack was mine at about 18k.

Folds around I bet 1600 from BTN with A2o
Only V calls from BB. And before he called, I did spot him counting my stack.

POT is about 4000.
Flop: 335r

V checks. I bet 4000. For a moment he thought and grabbed 4 or 5k in chips but then just flatted.

Pot is now about 8000.
Turn: Tc

V checks. I check behind.

River: 7d (no flushes) V bets 3500…

Obviously I don’t like a call here. I felt i could either raise AI or fold.

I would love some thoughts on whether a bluff here is +EV.

If you have any comments on my thought process here I would appreciate as well, as if I am just overthinking, or leveling myself into spots that are no good, I need to be aware of this.

My thoughts:
At the table, I put V on a pretty wide range including some speculative hands. His counting ym stack made me think set mining and flush/ straigh hunting were an option here as I felt that he thought he would out-play me post-flop in worst case. The range I put him on was:
99-22, AJs-A2s, K9s+, Q9s+, J8s+, T7s+, 97s+, 86s+, 75s+, 65s, AdQd, AhQh, AQo-A7o, KTo+, QTo+, JTo

I don’t think this range changes much throughout as I think this V decided to make plays regardless of cards.

On flop he can easily put me on over cards and just check-call here. On turn he likely plans to fold if I were to have bet again and if not, he further solidifies a read that at best I have 66-99, a monster or over cards.

On river I think he is capable of value betting if does have a pair of some sort but also with any hand in his range based on what he thought I likely had.

I can’t call his river bet and i could have given up but I feel like if I push here, he only calls if he has a T or a 7, or maybe a small pocket pair as a bluff catcher.

So in the end it came down to will he fold here close to 60% of the time? I obviously could not do combinatoric calculations of his entire range here at table but I did feel that hands he could call with were less than 40% of his range and so I pushed!

Thanks for your thoughts…