Hello

I reading this ebook right know and i stop in one chapter.

Sizing your 3-bets based on hand, opponent, and stack depth.
2. Your opponent’s tendencies matter.

Mersenneary says:
"Take an opponent who raises 100% of his hands from the button, and assume that a 3-bet to t150 will cause him
to continue with the following range:

There is picture of hand range

With any two cards, making this 3-bet is already preferable to folding, even if we were to check/fold every
single time postflop!"


So my question is. He describe the opponent 100% opening range from the BTN he decide 3bet (t150? - blinds are 10/20?)with 100% range vs player who will call so wide, why? I think we can 3bet bluff when we have good fold equity. Why that small 3beting (2.5BB) will shove profit?

Need answer that will blow up my brain

Put the range of folded hands in pokerstove or something similar - it's 50%.

You're making money because half the time villain raises they will fold to a 3bet preflop, although it depends on their mr and your 3b sizing.

Aright so villain opens 100% to t60(i assume blind level 15/30 because there the t150 is an optimal optimal 3bet size) and only continues with 50% of the hands (this is what the chart shows in the book).

Putting my worse than average math skills to the test I think we win 90 chips 50% of the time (when villain folds) and loose 120 chips every time our opponent calls us. (lets ignore postflop since the book ignores it too at this point)

So 3betting 100% is bad right? Well I dont know lets go further.
50% of the times -120
50% of the times +90
the total 100% is -15 chips (divide -120 with 2 cuz its 50% and divide 90 with 2 cuz thats 50% too and add them together)

Because if we were to open fold our big blind we were to loose 30 chips 3betting is better because by 3betting we just loose -15 chips over the long run.

Yayz! I solved it!
RTT314

That sounds like it's about correct

I would set it up in terms of "from start of hand" equity.

So 50% of time we win t60 from start of hand
50% of time we lose t150 from start of hand

=> .5*t60 - .5*t150 = -t45 from start of hand, which is indeed t15 worse than folding.

let's see what sizing we need to make it correct to 3b bluff given 50% folds:

-t30 = .5*t60 -.5*tX
=>t60 = .5*tX
=>tX = t120
=>X = t120

So for us to want to 3b just form pure fold equity, we need to be 2xing his raise (or less). So Mers would be correct if for instance blinds were t25/t50 and villain minr to t100 and we 3b him to t150 (or anything less than t200).

So yeah seems there is some typo there nice catch

No, because you made your calculations from the point of making decision, so there you finish, don't compare to folding or anything. Anything that is negative is negative and that's it. So it's indeed t15 worse than folding.

For calculations from the point of the hand beginning look at coffeeyay's post.

But remember that both ways are fine and it really doesn't matter which you're going to use as long you use it correctly.

oh nice catch crazyriver I didn't realize he ended up with the wrong conclusion

Hey guys,

it's a bit old thread but I'm reading the book right now and it might helpful for the future students. So I think you are all wrong. I'm a newbie so I might be wrong but think logically, do you really think they would make such a mistake in the book? I asked myself this and the answer was no so assuming the book is correct I got to find out how. And here it is:
your messed up the input numbers.

It's (0.5*90)-(0.5*150)=-30 -->> same as -30 if u fold! so that's why if he continues(calls a 3b) with less than 50% frequency you show an immediate profit.

Same as if he folds more than 50% of the time on the bb when you're min raising you can min raise 100% hands. Because let's say blinds are 15/30 and when you min raise to 60 you don't put 60 chips in the pot but 45 so you risk 45 chips to win 45(15sb+30bb).

Anyways though I don't know who would anyone fold 50% to a 2.5x(t150) 3bet since he would be getting 2:1 odds(240pot:120to call), so you only need to be 33% favorite to show profit. I think even fish have a feel that that's a stupid fold. So i don't really get why is this in the book since you can't apply it in the game.

Hope this helps.

I think blinds are 30/60 for 2.5x to be t150, so fold = -60

There are many other factors, such as not being able to realize all your equity, reverse implied, etc

I don't really know what you did there because we normally size our 3bets compared to a previous preflop raise and not big blinds right?

So if we put in formula

blinds: 30/60 he minraises to 120(puts only 90 not 120 in the pot) so pot is now 180(120+60bb) and it's action on us now we can do it my way and 3bet 2.5x his previous raise which is 120*2.5=300 and if we put it in formula:
0.5*180-0.5*300=-60 same as folding! so if he folds more than 50% we make profit?

Sorry but I don't see any sense in your statement that blinds should be 30/60 for t150(i think in the book this is meant to be a 3b and not preflop raise) so i think for blinds to be 30/60 it needs to be t300, but again i might be wrong.

And I think we could use this like if we're playing hu and we see that villain is folding more than 50% to our 3b we can widen our range and if he's still folding more than 50 we can widen it even more until we get to any two or he starts adjusting when we tighten back our range.

Or in the reverse situation if we see that we are folding more than 50% we should call looser? Of course the condition is that he's 2.5xing he's 3bets

am I completely wrong here or what?? some HU experts needed haha

Sorry, I didn't really look that much into the numbers.

Fwiw you can be folding way more than 50% vs 3bets and do fine, it's important to take into consideration how often you get into that spot, both by your mr freq and villains 3bet freq.

Okay I think I get the idea but honestly I don't know how to implement it in my game. I'm sure you're right and you don't have to explain it since i guess it takes time but if I understand right what you're saying is that how much you can/should fold(call) on 3bets depends on your min raise % compared to his 3b frequency?

Now if this is true let's say that I'm raising 90% and he's 3betting 15%. How does this info helps me to know what kind of hands should I call his 3b or should I change my raising freq etc.

Again, you don't have to explain it I'm just thinking out loud because I'm a total noob and it's all new for me.

Nah it's all good man, not much of an expert myself. My advice would be to look at the wider scheme of things and tackle it with logic first instead of complicating yourself with numbers. I'm not saying making equity calcs and whatnot isn't a good thing, rather that sometimes you can clear a whole bunch of doubts through more general logic.

Regarding the example you gave, it depends on what that 15% is made of, if it were linear for value I'd be more concerned with calling too much instead of folding, you can construct a range by yourself using crev or icmizer for different stack sizes.

Further, I'd also be thinking how his 3bet range affects his calling range, as in "he 3bets X hand so when he just calls and flop is Y he'll have less Z which means I can barrell since he is capped".

This is useful advice actually so tnx..and yeah I guess I should leave math alone for a while and focus on general and more practical things.