Hello. So I played a tournament yesterday where we were ITM, villain (CO) has shown a 3bet from BTN to my UTG open with 42o, thats about all the info I have on him. There are small payjumps at this point as we are in the early stages of the money.
We are 6 handed. I have a pretty tight/straightforward image, I have not shown any type of reckless play till this point.

CO stack is 25bbs, SB (hero) stack is 35. I dont remember what ante size was, lets assume the pot was 2.5 prior to any action.

CO open 2bbs
SB 3bet to 8bbs with AKo
Folded to CO who calls

Flop: Q84 rainbow
SB checks
CO shoves 17bbs

The potsize now is 18.5 and CO has 17bbs behind and I have 27bbs.

My relatively big 3bet sizing were due to that people tend to call too frequently so I figured I'd size it up. I am fairly balanced in this spot, I have TT+, AJs+,AKo,A2s-A7s, K5s-K9s (mixed freq),Q9s(mixed freq),Q8s(mixed freq), J9s (mixed freq), J8s (mixed freq).
I chose to check with AKo on the flop and don't know if I have enough strong hands in my checking range to protect against potential aggression from my opponent. I guess I would check/call all my 8's combos because im sort of on the top of my range with those after I check the flop.
I get 2:1 on a call so can I justify calling with AKo? Should I have cbet preflop? SPR is 1, am I commited at this point and need to call super wide?
I run in to this spots a lot where spr is really low and I miss the flop, is there a rule of thumb I can follow?

I can relate

Curious what the others will say.

I did a sim with a gto solver, I'm not sure if im using the software correctly but it suggests that we shove with AKo 100% of the time. I dont know why though.

With stack sizes you should be jamming here pre. As played don't like your check with your particular hand cuz villain is gonna do exactly what they did a huge portion of the time and take a good chunk of your stack uncontested, if you had JQ+ then obv trapping against this player type in this spot is a slam dunk. Also just because you haven't done anything reckless or your image is a certain type doesn't mean your opponent is always gonna to take that(amongst other things) into account

Agreed. Especially the shoving with 25BB effective so you don't put yourself in a spot like this.

Because the pot is huge and you still have outs to top pair or a backdoor straight draw, and you put the pressure on your opponent instead of letting them put the pressure on you.

As played my standard flop cbet would be 6bb's which is more than 33% effective stack so I would jam if I was betting and unless I have a read that he hit the flop hard I would be jamming. The reason to jam is that you have QQ+/AQ in your range and villain doesn't. We also block KQ as well. The other reason to jam the flop is that you haven't shown any reckless play up to this point.

I would have jammed pre-flop with 25 bb's effective stack though I wouldn't with 27+ bb's. I prefer this with AK because we are going to miss the flop 2/3 of the time so only 1/3 of the time is our life going to be easy on the flop. Also, I'd rather get some PP's to fold pre-flop than flip OOP. Another reason is that we are at a stage of the tournament where pay increases are small so basically doubling up (75% stack increase) will allow us to do a lot of aggressive things strategy wise on later streets whereas if we bomb out on a flip we lose very little.

If you're not sure how to play something post, then don't put yourself into a position where you need to play post when a reasonable alternative exists, be that either getting to an easier post spot or avoiding post play entirely. Jamming pre is perfectly reasonable here so do that instead rather than committing a third of effective stacks pre and not knowing what to do with a pot size bet remaining

Instead of worrying about a balanced check, which shouldn't be used very often IN THIS SPOT, why not consider balancing your Cbet sizes? For example, you could choose to jam on the flop with hands which has equity and has medium-good value, like AKo, Q9s, J9s-J8s, JJ-TT, and make a Cbet of 10-25% with other hands that have better value TPTK, OP, 2P, along with more pure bluffs Ax,Kx which you could fold to a 3bet on the flop or give up on the turn if neither an A nor K appears.

Thanks a lot for the responses! I’ve read them all. In retrospect I don’t know why I didn’t shove pre, it’s for sure +ev and it saves us the hassle of playing oop

Yeah, with AKs you might want to induce because you have a stronger chance of flopping something (IIRC it's 30% for a pair and 11% for a flush draw). But the big offsuit aces I would rather just shove than play OOP with 1 SPR on the flop, especially since a CO player with a good grasp of ranges will call you with hands you dominate. (Perhaps even more than that, a player who is showing you stuff like 42o as a bluff 3-bet vs. an UTG open is going to think you're making a move and will call light.)