NL100 AK bet or x/c ?

You have K:h which makes c/c less valuable since you can bluffcatch against fewer busted flush draws (KQ, KT, K9 ♥:h)

He is very loose pre, would expect his range to be between 15-20% here. This means he should have all suited AX, maybe ATo.

Betting here still seems really thin. You would need him to be fastplaying most of his sets and AJ combos on the flop or turn.

This is as good as it gets. And you only have 70% equity.

http://www.pokerstrategy.com
Board: 3sAh7hJc4d
Equity Win Tie
MP2 70.27% 70.27% 0.00% { AdKh }
MP3 29.73% 29.73% 0.00% { AQs-A2s, AQo-ATo }

EV(C/C) is likely to > EV(betting 1/3pot). You might get bluff-raised.

So what if he might get bluff raised? If he checks he might be bluff bet? Still we have bluff catcher in both cases but if we check villian checks back worse. I agree that check IP is better than bet 1/3 because after checing we cant get bluffed, but OOP as i know it is shown long time ago that bet is better

blockbetting certainly has its merits and could yield a higher EV for sure OOP

but at the same time I doubt OP wants to design a well-balanced blockbetting range for himself. You would need to mix in some nut combos and some bluffs.

In a vacuum, yes. Blockbetting is probably better, esp when we have the flush blocker. Esp against a more passive opponent. ASSUMING villain has 70% equity.

However, Villain only has 70% equity in the best case scenario. With more conservative estimates, his equity falls to ~65% or even lower, meaning that the optimal bet size is 20% of the pot or less.

And betting that amt is just silly.

mbml, If you are saying villian has all suited aces and maybe A10, wouldn't this be like a very easy valuebet. Villian is never folding an ace on the river...

A blockbet of ~25% pot some of the time (how often depends on how many sets+ hero has) with AK is probably going to give about 2-3% more EV than checking (depending on ranges).

But, you are going to need to be a fucking wizard (literally not human) to balance it, not lose even more EV with very suboptimal ranges & be vulnerable to giving away exploitative reads imo.

Originally posted by jules97
A blockbet of ~25% pot some of the time (how often depends on how many sets+ hero has) with AK is probably going to give about 2-3% more EV than checking (depending on ranges).

But, you are going to need to be a fucking wizard (literally not human) to balance it, not lose even more EV with very suboptimal ranges & be vulnerable to giving away exploitative reads imo.

If you need to be wizard to balance it well, then it should be even tougher for villian to realize what our range is in specific spot, meaning that we can play exploitativ vs everyone. I usually block bet for value and bluff block bet if board is really ugly for villian or he has inellastic range. I mostly get called with quite wide range and i rarely see bluff raises vs block bet. But if i would play vs someone who raises merged or bluff heavy i would put strong hands in such range because it becomes highest EV. Imo trying to be balanced in such complex spots is waste of EV vs most human non-cheating opponents.

Originally posted by jules97
But, you are going to need to be a fucking wizard (literally not human) to balance it, not lose even more EV with very suboptimal ranges & be vulnerable to giving away exploitative reads imo.

I dont think that it is so much more complex to balance it comparing to using one bet size. I would obviously block bet hands that have thin value, would add some % of nuts which can call shove and blocks his call range. So imo AA is good candidate and is probably enough to have those 3 combos to protect range vs shove. If we dont have any AA on river (likely not), then I would add % of AJ because it also blocks Jx and Ax hands, and is a good blocker vs shove.
In the end it is easy to add appropriate % of bluffs to be balanced. And then, the rest of value go to e.g. 75% pot bet size, and again appropriate number of bluffs. Off course it would be even better to overbet e.g. JJ, 77.

And you can allways argue saying the range is not perfectly balanced, but imo we dont have to be balanced 100% vs non-cheating human players. Thats why I just dont care about being balanced in spots where villian is super unlikely to know my range.

Originally posted by sandercvo
mbml, If you are saying villian has all suited aces and maybe A10, wouldn't this be like a very easy valuebet. Villian is never folding an ace on the river...

Why do u say that? Im sure he will fold some of his weaker aces (33% fold to r cbet)

@ginger

Sure, if we have a reliable read on an exploitable opponent, you do whatever you can get away with. I'm just pointing out the benefits verse the risks of adding complications against someone that isn't going to be run over.

If a line is hard for hero to play, that doesn't infer it is hard for a villain to deal with. My argument is that it's going to be easier for a villain to deal with, because hero is going to make more mistakes. Simply the act of taking the tricky line is going to raise alarm bells.

I challenge you to try and build some ranges in spots like these with multiple bet sizes. Things get pretty complicated, pretty fast. You're often going to have mixed strategies, stuff like having the same hand going in 4 or so different ranges, that all need to be vigilantly balanced.