Villain called with A-A in the above hand and i didn't improve.


Anyway, i think it's a good shove because if his 3bet range resembles J-J/A-K and he almost always c-bets the flop, he isn't often going to have a good enough hand to call a shove on this board.

Given the board texture and because i am holding A-K, there are

6 combinations of J-J
3 combinations of Q-Q
3 combinations of K-K
3 combinations of A-A
9 combinations of A-K, suited and non suited

If he folds 15 hands of the 24 hands he bets with on the flop, he is folding over 62% of the time i go all in on the flop.

To make the calculation shorter and easier, i am going to assume that i have 0 equity when called.

I am risking 169 to win a pot of 116:

EV(push) = (116) * x + (-169)(1-x)
285x - 169 = 0
285x = 169
X = 0.59

Villain needs to fold more than 59% of the time to make bluffing profitable.

In reality, i do have around 6% equity when called by Q-Q+. And if i had a backdoor flush draw (i.e AKcc), my equity would be around 10%.

While not wildly profitable, it is +EV. However, it is so little value for such a large amount of variance that i would recommend not doing this without a lot of buy ins for the limit you are playing at. For me at 200NL, this play was probably worse than folding.


However, if villains' range in the above hand were wider, and included some suited connectors and small pairs, this would become a very profitable place to shove with Ace high since you fold out a ton of his c-bet range. Most players' with wide 3bet ranges c-bet in reraised pots too often, which is why shoving over their c-bets is a very profitable move.