We played pre and flop well, but our big turn and river sizings with trips on a flush-completing, range-unfavorable runout are too optimistic—use smaller bets or check more often.
Flop 7s Ac Ad, we have AhQd: trips with a strong kicker. On this paired, Ace-high, dry board, CO has clear range advantage as the preflop raiser, and OOP strategy is to check almost entire range. With our exact hand the solver basically pure-checks; checking keeps our range protected, allows CO to stab with air and worse Ax, and we’re never worried about protection on such a static texture. Our check is perfect.
Facing 1.4 into 4.5, we check-raise to 4.2 with AhQd on 7s Ac Ad. Solver treats this hand as a mixed candidate: roughly half call, half raise large (about 0.9x pot). Calling lets CO continue bluffing and under-repping our strength; raising starts building a pot vs Ax and overpairs, especially when we don’t have the board completely locked (we still lose to AK/AA/77). Our raise is slightly smaller than the solver’s preferred size but very much in the same spirit—value raise with a premium hand on a dry, range-polarizing board. Strategically sound, not a mistake.
Turn Jd brings 7s Ac Ad Jd, adding a flush draw but still an Ace-paired, relatively static texture. Pot is ~13BB, we bet 8.2BB (~65% pot) with AhQd after having check-raised flop. For this combo, solver strongly prefers a small 1/3-pot bet most of the time, with some checking, and almost never uses our bigger sizing. The reason: CO’s range is now quite strong and condensed after calling a flop raise (lots of Ax, some full houses, some flush draws). We are ahead of a lot of that, but we’re not invulnerable; we want to value-bet thinly and keep their range wider, not polarize the pot unnecessarily. A smaller bet keeps dominated Ax and draws in more comfortably and controls SPR for river decisions. Our bet is fine conceptually (value + building pot), but the size is unnecessarily big and slightly lowers EV.
Note: Turn bet size is too large; with trips in a range-disadvantage spot, a small 1/3-pot bet or some checks are higher EV than a chunky 2/3-pot bet.
River 7s Ac Ad Jd 6d completes the diamond flush draw. We still have trip Aces with Q kicker and the Ah/Qd blocking many nut and Q-high flushes, but crucially we do NOT have a flush—our best hand is Ad Ah Ac Qd Jd vs villain’s range. CO’s range is now very value-heavy after calling flop raise + turn bet: full houses (77, AJ), strong Ax, and plenty of diamond flushes. Solver’s range plan on this runout is mostly check OOP, with some small 1/3-pot bets; for our exact hand it leans heavily toward a small bet when betting, almost never using the ~2/3-pot sizing. By betting 19.3 into 29.4 (~66% pot), we over-polarize a hand that should sit in a more ‘thin value / pot-control’ region. That sizing tends to fold out weaker bluff-catchers and put us in a rough spot versus raises or strong calls from full houses and flushes. Checking or betting small targets worse Ax and some stubborn pairs much more cleanly.
Note: River 2/3-pot bet overplays trips on a flush-completing card in a spot where villain is very value-dense; checking or using a small 1/3-pot bet is preferred.