Here's an interesting hand that I played the other day. The villian here seems to be very aggressive over a 200 hand sample. His 3bet stats are about 30% in position and about 10% of the time from the blinds. He is also quite aggressive post-flop making his passive play later in the hand quite interesting. Also, as far as I know, I don't think he has any reason to believe that I'm hyper aggressive.

Preflop it's all pretty standard. I bet with a beautiful hand from the button, he 3bets, a fish calls over him, and I complete the call.

On the flop I'm not exactly thrilled about the ace, and after he bets I thought about just jamming over him with the 2n'd set+FD+Gutshot and I'm usually getting my money in okay against even the worst case scenario pocket Aces. But because his 3betting range is wide, there's a lot of worse hands he could be betting with too. And since there aren't hardly any turn cards that would give him more equity against me when he has worse, I elect to just call and let him make some mistakes with the worse part of his range on the turn.

On the turn an ace comes up, and this is where things get interesting. Instead of betting it himself, he decides to check and give me the option to bet it myself. I think I almost always have him beat because it just doesn't make much sense at all for him to be checking his very narrow value range. For one, he's an aggressive opponent who can represent a much wider range than most when betting, so when he actually does have the nuts he's going to get wider calls. Secondly, this isn't a board I think he should expect me to bet at with a range wider than I would possibly call a bet with. Any draws I'm checking down because a check/raise is too obvious, and he should expect me to check down a hand like 66 a lot of the time. If he bets himself though, he should expect me to make more calls than what I would bet out myself when checked to. It really just looks like a spot where he decides not to bet because there's really nothing worse that can call when he goes for a value bet. Having said that, I decide that I can go for a value bet, and I bet about half pot hoping to get check/raised by his Axxx that wants to get it in before a junk spade can hit the river. He just calls.

Once he checks down the river and gives me the option to bet, I think it's a pretty clear value bet. He's getting 4 to 1 on a call, so really shouldn't expect me to attempt a bluff with any busted draws, and since I don't have any bluffs in my range, I would imagine he just goes for maximum value with made hands against weaker sets by leading out on the river himself and forcing me to call instead of giving me the chance to check behind.

I also think that because of the way the board ran down it is a pretty safe value bet on the river as far as possible combinations go. The jack is unlikely to give him a boat since I have 2 or them in my hand, and the 7 and 5 are really unlikely to be anywhere in his 3bet range that contains an ace. Basically the only thing he can possibely show up with here that beats me are the one combo of AA, and the two combos of of AJ.

Anyway I shove river and he turns over the stone cold nuts, baffling me. Maybe he just kinda had shallow thinking and went off my name read and figured I'd bluff at a busted flush draw? Would you guys have played this hand any differently or is this just one of those strange situations where I'm gonna end up value owning myself correctly?