Bluff Catch River? Play this differently?

Vs 2 players, an over-card and the 9 OTT making trips possible, I would probably not barrel turn, either.
With the read you have, a call can be reasonable, but I think it is not a mistake to fold. Have you seen him do that in multi-way pots or only HU?

OTF I would bet 1/3 pot max.

a fold is probably the best play IMO, in a multi way pot need to play more cautious. Once you bet flop and have both callers, they coudl have weak kings, draws , 9x suited connectors.

The check turn is possibly were I would bet again, but as i said i think either villain could have a weak K.

I think after the flop calls i would just try to check it down and go into check/fold. even on river bet.

One of the side benefits of folding -- even (or especially) if it is a bluff is that opponent develops the idea that you fold to bluffs.
This tendency is fatal for them when you have the hand they're representing

Hello Casey!

First of all when two players limp in first positions it tends to be geared towards pocket pairs, middling cards etc. So actually on the flop you can remove a reasonably high percentage of Ax combinations, and probably a decent chunk of Qx.

Why does that matter? Well when we decide to bet with a hand like this we are either getting them to

• call a worse hand,
• charge a draw
• denying them the chance to out draw us for free when they do fold
• make them define their ranges so we can make better decisions on later streets

For the first point like monteCarlol said - it would be better to bet smaller - we make them call weaker hands like crappy backdoor draws, and even underpairs like 22 33. This is the same for point number 4 random backdoor air and Q high should fold even against smaller sizing.
Charging draws is undeniabe - we do remove hands like TJ offsuit, but there should be a decent chunk of draws that calls us.
As to the fourth point - well when we bet half pot, they will be less likely to call us with weak hands. We also make our hand look weaker to them.

Conclusion
I would prefer either check or bet small - 25 to 33%, to make them call us with weaker hands.
On the river when we do half pot, I would say it is close but we have a fold on our hands - even against this guy, but it is close. He bets into two people behind him, called the same on flop, and in general at the smallest stakes online people tend to underbluff paired boards on average. I don't fault you to call with your read however.

Manipulating your opponent
Another reason to bet smaller is the payer type - when you bet 25% on the flop you allow him to call a lot more hands, you appear weaker, and your river call vs the spazzy type becomes easier.

Going with tells
Many high stakes coaches will tell you you should learn the fundamentals first, ignore your opponents and try to play a solid gameplan. I don't necessarily agree with this at microstakes. This is where you play for fun, this is where you meet by far the most recreational players that make massive errors and give out blatant tells - I would say why the hell not - pay attention to everyone, make mistakes and learn from them. As long as you do work on your fundamentals you can try to work with reads against recreational players too - this skill will transfer with you to much higher stakes once you reach them where you will mostly work on your technical game.

Snowie
As a bonus I will show what Pokersnowie thinks on the flop at the lowest stake if offers- but as the damn "cloned baby" that plays against itself until it perfects poker - that Snowie is - it will have way tighter ranges prefop than actual players have, and betting small has reasonable merit at NL2 against actual players

Thank you everyone for the feedback very much appreciated it all. Lemon really went in depth on this one thank you very much Sir very helpful . There is one part I am confused of ,

If we bet smaller on the flop dont we give flushdraws good odds to call? Or is the thought process that we dont care because about giving the draws good odds because sraws is not their whole range and we want to extract value from the marginal hands and weaker hands?

I need to work on my thought processing st the table. During this hand I was thinking;

-I bet the flop because I have good range advantage and could get value from many weaker hands like any club draw, 9x, gut-shots etc.

-On the turn I thought a K or 9 would likely bet by now out of UTGs range, is this an accurate idea in general? Do 2NL players slow play more often than other player pools? When you are UTG in this spot is checking the turn with a value hand and blasting the river a commonly used play?

To protection/size
Simpy put yes - bigger size is straight up better if you know they have flush draws. If you knew they had flush draws you would just probably overbet flop and pot turn to charge them the most.

And you definitely do care about that - it's one of the factors that determines your sizing, if they never had flush draws you just check likely.

Two things
1) Flush draws, especially when he is very loose and can have offsuit hands seem like many hands, but proportionally to the rest of his range will be just a relatively small % on the flop when you didn't narrow his range down yet - you pretty much nailed it with the exception that we do care, but don't let our size et that drive us as much.

You can see equilab and try to compare offsuit and suited combinations and ratios
https://www.pokerstrategy.com/poker-software-tools/equilab-holdem/

2) Value
Right - I like your thinking, you think about value, range advantage, and those things are definitely true.

One thing that you can never master but can start working on is multi-street thinking i.e. when you think about how you get value from different parts of his range you can try to get into the habit to consider more and more streets. i.e. if you bet big on the flop and the aggro guy has undercards to JJ with a crappy backdoor you make him fold - where if you bet 25% he can call the hands you have absolutely crushed and don't need to charge really, you then can call more rivers vs this player type = you gain value from that part of his range by betting smaller.

But you lose it from flush draws, potentially from 9x etc. Basically it's all about thinking about how different parts of his range will react to your sizing, and try to weight his range over both this street and rest of the hand.

Solvers and Human limitations
If that looks overwhelming/impossible to master it's because it literally is for a human There's just too many combinations and complexities of possible decision trees to calculate it all precisely.

Solvers can do it in a simplified capacity but you don't have to worry - to gain winrate where you are playing all you have to do is just think harder and further relative to your competition and you will increase your winrate by default. At NL2 that means that just by considering the river when betting the flop, period, you already gained an edge over large majority of people.

Turn
I do see people donking there, but you were the preflop raiser, you bet the flop to 50% - I do think that still a reasonable % of even NL2 players will check with 9x, especially the UTG guy who can still hope 2 people behind him bet