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So theortically if I can shove JJ+ with +ev then shoving AK isnt unbalanced. Even though I dont think villain cares about whats balanced.
Just in this case... PPs dont make up most of his range. So in this case a shove with AK will be +ev if im getting folds most of the time, and a shove with JJ+ won't be the most +ve line.
Its about what range he thinks i've assigned him... although im sure he doesnt care.
Its evident that he's not a thinking player. He is thinking about what he has... not what I have. The question is does he fold the flop a certain % of the time to make this play +ev. IMO on a paired board where his range is still as wide as harrys waistline... probably.
The only reads I could think of that could make this shove the most +EV play with our value range would be...
i) The villain is going to call any bet with any pair.
ii) The villain will not bluff if we check to him and must improve to call any bet with his unpaired hole cards.
Those two reads could make shoving the flop the best option with our value hands.
However, we don't need to worry about balancing our range against someone that doesn't bluff or call light. So if we have those reads, we should shove our value hands and bet small with our unpaired hands. I don't think we have those reads, though.
It doesn't matter if the villain understands balancing. He understands which hands he can beat and which hands he thinks your betting looks like. Even if he doesn't know what a balanced range is, he knows how to beat an unbalanced one.
The non-bolded portions: As I said earlier the shove probably won't be +EV if we are only being called by hands that beat us. Even if it was +EV, it wouldn't be the most +EV as we have the option to bet smaller or check to induce bluffs.
maybe.
If we think he'll bluff his weaker hands if we check, we should check-call.
If we think he'll call a small bet with his junky hands, we should bet small.
If we think he could bluff raise when we bet small, we should bet-call.
If we think he will neither bluff when we check, nor call a bet unless he's caught something, then we should bet small to steal his equity and give up if he doesn't fold. Checking would just be giving him a free card to get there.
The same would be true whether we had AK or quads. We're not trying to get value from a narrow part of his range when we have the nuts, and we're not unbalancing our range by betting small or checking with AK.
You can go into a thousand different scenarios based on previous history. If we want to shove, though, it should be because he can call us with lots of worse hands - so thinks we'd be 3-betting big, then shoving the flop very, very wide - or he can fold all his hands weaker than AA or KK - so we've always had one of these hands when we've done it in the past.
If we were in a vacuum, we could give a fairly definitive answer on what's going to be best in general - probably be scared by the pre-flop flat and give him a range like AK, QQ, JJ, TT - but we're not in a vacuum here.
i) We can be called by worse hands.
ii) He can fold better hands.
In Response to Re: How do you play this spot?:
Don't worry about seeming arrogant. I never do.Just on the bolded portion - No one wanting to "adapt to any kind of change" - surely that's what all the ifs and buts are about. We wouldn't want to say something silly like "Shove with 100% of my range" on the flop if it can be demonstrated that this would be bad because of our history with the villain. The ifs and buts are us adapting to our circumstances.
When we bet to protect, that's a value bet. As discussed, we're either looking to be called by worse hands (generally draws) or we're trying to fold out our opponent's equity. That discussion is pretty much what this thread has been about.
When we bet to prevent ourselves being bluffed off the best hand, we've got to ask why we're doing that. Why are we trying to stop our opponent putting more money into the pot with a worse hand?
Sometimes the villain gets there. If we check the flop to allow the villain to bluff but the villain checks back, we have to judge how well the turn hits the villain's range. You say our hand is vulnerable but, as discussed, it isn't.
We're either already behind on the flop or we're at worst a 75% (ish) favourite. On the turn, we go behind around 12.5% of the time to that range.
If we bet to stop people bluffing, we put ourselves in spots like the one you mention - betting KK on an Ace-high flop. As you say, we're not going to be called by many worse hands, so the value of our bet is likely to be negative. If we check, it's up to us to know whether we're going to be bluffed enough of the time to make the call down.
Betting, though, gives us a situation where we can never make more money, only lose the value of our bet. We also lose the value of bluff-catching and we may still be bluffed on later streets if the villain can float us. Albeit, it may be tough to catch bluffs when we're out of position like this with an underpair. That's just the disadvantage of being OOP. As long as we have some idea of the villain's range we should be able to make better decisions.
In the hand in question, I can only commit to a particular action based upon reads on the villain. In the absence of reads, I could give a specific suggestion based on what I think is most likely in a vacuum, which I did.
We shouldn't be giving advice to do XYZ regardless of reads, though.
As for shoving 100% of your range here, well I've said repeatedly why I think that's bad.
You may well balance your range if you always do this, but you're missing a ton of value every time you get the villain to fold when you have a big hand. You also stack off unnecessarily when you don't have a massive hand.
A much better way to balance your range is to make the most exploitative action in this hand, then remember the line you took the next time you're in a similar situation with this villain. So if you check-fold here with the AK, check next time you're in a similar situation with AA.