Knocking out the BB is profitable with hands that like to be heads up, but it's not likely to be profitable with hands that don't.

76 suited, for instance, is going to like that 3 way pot a lot more than it's going to want to be heads up and out of position.

The questions are (1) are there a wide enough range of 76 suited type hands -that it's worth it to give up the 3rd bet with value hands and (2) how much do you gain from having the BB in the hand with those sorts of hands and how much do you lose from having the BB in the hand when you have other hands such as A9 or something.

Again, we'd need callip's model to be sure of the numbers, but one thing I am totally sure of is you are not "printing money" with this call. At most it is marginally profitable.

Indeed, a live player who thinks this is "printing money" is a live player who desperately needs tracking software to discipline her.

You are printing money when opponents make mistakes like sb did this hand and just lite 3 big bets on fire.


I'm just curious how you arrived at the notion that tough online players folded preflop here when you didn't play in the game and they didn't fold prefloo here. Although some of the nitty rake back pros likely did fold preflop.

Also, I agree this call is probably marginally profitable, or slightly above that. But guess what over the course of a few years after I make 10,000 marginally profitable decisions and you make 10,000 disciplined folds who do you think will have better results?

To be clear, we do not ever want BB in the hand. We simply want the overlay that his money provides us.
This is why it's often more profitable to raise him out and force him to surrender 1 SB as an overlay, rather than to have him put in 1 additional SB and still have a chance at the pot.

Lawdude really man ...
You advocate folding Q5s in the BB 3 way but trying find a strategy for not 3 betting in the SB, forgoing the BB dead money by not 3 betting, to play some more hands like 76s OOP in the SB.

Do I get this right ?

One has nothing to do with the other.

Q5 is a bad poker hand that makes a lot of bad hands. It's unlikely to be profitable in very many scenarios, and I'm very convinced that this sort of thing is a classic example of live players acting like fish (i.e., convincing themselves when mathematical data is unavailable that the not-fun activity of folding and patience and waiting for better hands is costing them money).

I could be wrong, but that's how I approach the issue.

On the other hand, a 3-bet or fold strategy for the SB is either going to force us to fold a lot of playable-for-1 1/2 bets hands or is (more likely, with typical 2 plus 2'ers) going to have us putting in a lot of money with 7 high and a you-know-what in our hands as we 3-bet too wide.

Now, I'm actually not nearly as convinced about the SB calling strategy than I am about the Q5. There's a strong possibility that 3-bet or fold is actually correct. The reason I got interested in it is because of the 25-50 game at Hustler, where the SB is $15 and thus we are only putting in 1.4 bets when we call pre-flop. I've done a fair amount of math that suggests that if you posit a wide enough raiser and a sticky enough big blind, a calling strategy starts to look pretty good. But I haven't taken it beyond that yet.

This is ridiculous. Playing 7 high heads up out of position against a raise is just almost never going to be profitable. A number of hands profit immensely from additional bodies in the pot, and carry implied odds that are far higher than the 1SB gained from folding out the BB (much of which is probably captured by the initial raiser in position anyway).

I'm quite open to the idea that a calling strategy is wrong (indeed, I am not even at the point where I think it is right yet), but if your reasoning starts and ends with "we make 1SB from the BB folding", um, no, you haven't analyzed the issue.

I don't think this hand is actually marginally profitable. At best it is. At worst, it's something else.

And you should err on the side of discipline, because most poker leaks spring from indiscipline, boredom, and desire to gamble, because most poker players, even good ones, have all of these problems. Far fewer poker leaks spring from overly disciplined pre-flop play.

I mean I guess you're right if you think 7 high is better than Q high .....
Whether it is a pair or flushes ( adding the factors that we put more money as well in the pot in the SB in the worst position possible with 7high while with Q high we are in the BB and putting less money pf).

I mean you think there's a big difference of having a pair of 5 instead of 6 or 7?
And a lot more chance to beat a pp with pair of Q than with a pair of 7 as well.

The only way a strategy like that in SB could work would be in 2/3 ratio blinds I guess.

If someone splashes 25 BB in the pot, would you rather play it heads up or multiway?

I'm not saying in the end it's going to be overall profitable to 3-bet 76 and get it HU OOP. While I'd prefer BB to sacrifice his bet and forfeit all equity, I also don't want to stick in more bets than I have to as an equity dog.

Or you could just fold 7-high in the worst position.

Well, yeah, in a vacuum playing 7 high heads up out of position against a raise is not profitable. But that's not the question - the question is what including a hands like 76s does to the overall expectation of your range. There's a very good argument that playing hands like 76s here increases the expectation of the rest of your range (in other words, that it acts as a loss leader and makes you win more with your value hands). And even if you and the Captain are right that you should fold 76s here, I'm sure there's some point where you should start 3betting hands (J9s?) that might be overall equity dogs against the opener's range.

Also, while you're correct that there are situations where we stand to make more by playing a multiway pot for fewer bets than playing a shorter-handed pot for more bets because of implied odds, those considerations almost never apply to this specific situation (i.e., where there is one raiser and it's folded to you in the SB). In a 3-handed pot, getting the BB to fold her one measly small bet is typically a huge coup.

It's true that if you start from a mindset that you must 3-bet or fold, then you should 3-bet a few hands that are equity dogs (J9 suited being a very good example actually), although not 76 suited. Players who 3-bet 76 suited in the small blind are just burning their money unless there is some reason they have ridiculous fold equity post-flop.

But that's exactly the same as saying that if you start from a mindset from the BB that you must 4-bet or fold, then you should 4-bet some equity dogs. But as many people here have pointed out, you gain something by NOT 4-betting and playing a wider, uncapped range for 3 bets. THAT's the important comparison here.

No it's not.
The BB has no one left to try knock out by 3 or 4 betting pf to get the dead money, because his last to act.

Let's say BU raise , SB 3bet .
It would be a pretty stupid mistake for BB not capping if he knew the BU would fold any higher frequency than what the odds would give him to call profitably.
Even if for that, BB would had to play a bit tighter.

Passing 1 full bb ( BU folding) dead money and gaining the best position vs the 3bettor (SB) for just to play a few more hands ( by not capping pf to have uncapped range) would actually be terrible imo.

you should error on the side of profitability, if you are sufficiently bankrolled. I'd make a more detailed post about discipline if I had time but I'm going to go get blackout drunk and gamble.

I'm going to do a separate post on all these issues at some point, but I have knocked out button raisers before with a BB 4-bet. Just FYI.

Jesse, 6mo between blog posts. I quit reading

Nobody ever reads Jesse correctly anyway.

So?

So you are assuming that you have 0 fold equity in the BB example and some obscenely high amount of fold equity in the SB example. Neither assumption is correct.

I open and fold to a 4 bet more than most, although still. It very often. The hands that I am folding you would likely rather have me calling

Is that what I wrote ?
I guess so ...

Ps: I was responding to your assumption that it was the same mind with BB and SB, which I just write is not applicable.
Than you just answer to validate my point .
I am kind of lost .