When most people mention balance at live games it’s just another term for FPS and show that you look smart wrt poker theory or knowledge/whatever. Take it out of your dictionary, play your value hands straightforward, and rake in the money. It’s that simple. Balancing vs a whale...especially with a set on this board... i dont even know what to say

What about 78 or 7T? With any of these hands though, given that he is a station it would seem he is calling a flop raise. Yes maybe 33 and 55 fold to a flop raise, but are underpairs really a large part of his range here? It seems like trying to build a huge pot with his pair + draws or just draws is going to yield so much more money than trying to milk him for a little more with his trash.

I think is an underrated post and sums up the flop situation quite well. Villain is aggressive, not a complete drooler, and won't call raises with air or mid pair on a wet board. Most of the time he is holding air on the flop, or close to it. I would guestimate if you did the math of his range and what he calls flop raises with vs realistic implied odds, you're better off letting him hang himself here and potentially on every street. If he donks off 25% of this size stack over 3 streets with nada every time, stacks would probably have to be deeper to justify poking that bear. (I'm not stoving this, tho)

We don't know what V has shown down when he has gotten stacked, which would help a lot.

Shoving the river makes a lot of sense because of what we don't block, and how disguised we are.

Calling flop for balance is silly but calling for exploitation is not silly.

No sir. Calling for balance or exploitation is silly given the description of the villain as a calling station. We do in fact not block a lot of his value range. 77, 78, 88, 89, 99, T9, TT seemed a lot more likely than an under pair from a guy described as not a complete drooler.

Assigning a pretty generous value range because calling almost ATC pre, stabbing flops with nothing, I must respectfully disagree, due to how much he voluntarily gives away without pressure. I'd guess it adds up to more over the long-run than what you'd get when he actually hits something. (similar concept to why he's a losing player in the first place)

Plus you'd have to assume he goes all the way with all of these to realize your implied odds, which is certainly not 100% of the time. (again, if we knew what he stacked off with, it'd help us)

If stacks were $1500, what you're saying becomes very correct because the implied odds skyrocket whereas his voluntary spew doesn't go up proportionally.

Is he a complete drooled or not? Your posts seem to oscillate depending on which would support your point. Only a complete drooler is going to take a hand like 33 for three streets unimproved and commit a large chunk of his stack which just seems super optimistic.

Only blue is included. Sorry for the ambiguous post. This is value range, not preflop range so I excluded a lot.

ETA I also updated the snapshot while you were replying, it seems, to add more Jx to help your side of the point because I think he continues with any Jx for a raise OTF a nonzero amount of time. It doesn't change much though.

This

Notice we don't have to raise a crazy amount OTF to get stacks in by the river. Villain makes it $20 into $60 which is virtually a check IMO. We don't have to make it $150 and blow him off everything. We can make it $50 if we want, barely more than a clickback. He's continuing wide to a small raise.

+2. I'm usually a guy who can respect different ways to play a hand, but this one really is a no-brainer in my view with villain as described.