KK in NL cash

[jeffnc]

Assuming healthy stacks of about the normal max buy in or more, and stakes of $1/2 live or .50/1 or 1/2 online, I'm questioning the wisdom of getting it all in with kings. Basically everything I've read says you should be willing to get all your chips in with KK. But checking my results, I see that every time I've gotten it in with kings I've seen aces. (Note, as I said earlier this is "healthy" stacks. Short stacks, like $40 in a $200 game don't count.) Are players just too tight nowadays? Is a third or fourth raise just a dead giveaway now?

When I've gotten it all in with AA, I've only gotten called by KK or AA. One time live I went all in against a really bad player with QQ, but he had KK. Another time live, I put in the fourth raise all in with AA and got called by KK. The player to my left said loud enough for me to hear "I would have folded KK so fast there..." These are $1/2 players who are otherwise not that good. It just seems they are super sensitive to this sort of preflop aggression now.

Online I have many more results - 11 occurrences with KK and each time (I was called) I've run into AA. The hands have played out "normally" - large raise, large reraise, then either one more reraise followed by all in, or straight to all in.

Playing the hand differently (waiting to the flop) won't change much I don't think. Assuming a large percentage of your stack was in preflop (at least 25%) and assuming no ace flops, theoretically you should still be able to push the flop and even if called by a set, the set will be unprofitable in the long run. But in this case you will virtually always be called by aces if you push the flop, because aces should be safe from sets by the same reasoning.

So my question, have times changed? Or are my results just variance, and are other players seeing radically different results? Are you getting called by AK or QQ/JJ enough to make up for AA? In my sample, KK is hugely -EV so far (when getting all in preflop).