Hey guys, another general question on my journey towards enlightenment.

How do you approach 3betting at the lower stakes readless?

Obviously we aren't concerned with polarising our range as we play a different villain almost every game, so how far do you take value hands? What is your default sizing over a minraise assuming 25bb (i.e. stars 10/20 level). 100 chips (5bb)? 120? Smaller with stronger hands as we want a call and aren't concerned with balancing?

What hands do you want to avoid playing OOP in bloated pots? I assume all high/low hands fall in to this category, like A6. Anything else?

Are you 3betting 20% (pretty much any broadway) for value readless vs a micro stakes fish? Or do you keep it fairly tight as you expect villains at this level to call/4bet shove wide?

Tying in with my last post, how do you approach cbetting when you have 3bet, say KcQc, and the flop comes J87ss? You are OOP and villain has flatted your 3bet, the board is super wet, what now?
I assume you cbet every A and K high board as they are such a huge part of your range.
Any other pointers?

Thanks in advance.

I 3bet hands wich have a good stand-alone value (high PP) and/or a good playability (AJ, etc. pp). I 3bet shove low PP and some lower Ax.

I do not 3bet any broadway vs unknown, because I see more value with flatting hands like QJ etc. pp

The board you mention I just cbet, because I do not see him hit the board so hard with his open / flat range. I see him 4bet-shoveing 77 and 88 and not really give him JT, Q9 etc. pp.....maybe AJ if he flats this. I just bet / fold this board. The Board is not scary for us only.

I do not like betting this board bigger than 1/2 ps tough, simply because I do not see the random micro-fish care if he gets the right odds for calling his FD/SD and I might not even be ahead on this board (we might be up versus A high with FD). It's another story if you need to protect your hand.

I play 7 and 15$-hypers.

My default 3bet-size over a min-open (40) is 100. Value-hands and Bluffs with same sizing.

Don't like to play 3bet pots with offsuit Baby-Aces and small pairs, prefer hands that flop good (suited connectors) instead.

I shove almost any pairs 22 - 77, and 3bet/call better; shove A7 - A10, 3bet/call better (roughly and depending on opponent of course).

In my oppinion you can call a lot in micros and try to outplay opponents.

The J87ss might be a bet/fold (nit) or check/fold (aggro) with KQ depending opponent.

Ok cheers again guys.

I'm trying to try a few new things while it doesn't cost a lot of my bank roll.

Atm I generally shove the middle aces and 22-TT, 3bet ~100 (used to be 120 but I dropped it down as the pot is too big if I miss) AJ+ and JJ+. I used to shove these higher aces as that's what Chadders said to do But now I'm not so afraid of playing a bigger pot OOP when I think I'm ahead of my opponent.

I may try adding QJ and KJ+ (even KT?) to my non all in 3betting range as they generally play well post flop. Does anyone do this as standard. Again I'm talking readless here. Once I have reads I think I have an ok idea what to do (vs a $3.50 player anyway).

Just trying to get my thoughts out...

I might be wrong but I prefer to flat those types of hands vs. standard-opponents most of the time (3bet or shove against aggros). Don't like to commit with QJ or KJ, don't like to check/fold unimproved either; I try to get it in with KQ though.

I don't 3-bet these without reads that villain is calling too wide. My 3-bet range readless is pretty much AJ+, KQ and 99+.

I 3bet AJ+ and TT+ readless. sizing with AJ+ is a bit bigger than with TT+. lower pocket pairs and middle aces I shove.

Ok then maybe I'll change it back to Roaz's range (which is pretty similar to what I used to do). I based my original play off the Chadders HT pack, however that is at $60 level and average villain is probably a bit speweyer (is that even a word???) down at my level.

With reads that villain is loose IP I definitely 3bet wider for value and as a bluff (i.e. polarised).

Ok so I have been messing around with my 3betting, however I don't have much volume so my stats aren't much help here. I've taken some of the ideas from this thread and created a 'readless' 3bet range based on some of the advice. At the moment it looks like this:



I jam the weaker aces and 22-99 (6.3%).
Non all-in (NAI) 3bet JJ+, AJ+, KQ (5.9%), plus the bluff hands (6.0%).

I chose enough bluff hands from the top of my folding range to give me a total 3bet of ~20% for no other reason than I have heard it's a good number

So my questions now are:

1. Is it a good idea to have a polarised 3bet range readless?
2. Is it a good idea to have a polarised range at micro stakes?
3. Is my ratio of bluff to value ok?
4. Does anyone 3bet jam weaker aces than I have indicated above? At the moment I flat them 25bb and start shoving below 20bb.
5. What size are your NAI 3bets, assuming PS structure (25bb/500 stacks)?

Thanks guys!

edit: for those interested I am up 241bb/100 ev adjusted for the NAI (polarised) range above, however I didn't add the polarised hands until recently so my range would be weighted towards value.

At lower stakes readless, I generally assume my opponents play loose passive ABC until I get a read. So I tend to 3bet for value only at first.

But I have to say, asking how to play readless, is probably the wrong question. The worst model you can use is the readless one. You should be asking what to look for so you can tune your 3bets to the opponent at hand.

To this, a big thing that I'm trying to figure out is when is he raising vs limping, and when he's limping, exactly what is he limping. His raising range, that I'm 3betting against is the complement to what he limps. It's less expensive to see his cards when he limps, so it happens more often.

If he's the prototypical passive ABC donk, he's transparent: he raises good, limps medium, folds bad. I want to know as quickly as possible if that's wrong! But if it's right, I want to attack his limps and give little value to his raises, so I play very tight vs his raises: I only 3bet my very best hands and fold quite wide. At low levels, this is my default until I see otherwise. If he raises 30-40%. I probably 3bet my top 10-12%. I'm going to be raising his limps more in this case, until he adjusts.

If he's limping a range that isn't just the junk he won't raise, then I know he raises some weak hands (polarized range), so for the same PFR% I should get a few more folds by 3betting, but I need to be aware when he doesn't fold, I'm against a tighter range. If I see him limp A3o, but raise 97o, it changes my thinking.

Most importantly, if he has a small limp range, and is raising wider, then I really want to 3bet a lot more. My first order of business against these guys is to figure out if I should be ambushing their limps or their raises. If I'm being raised 60-70% or more, I 3bet wider, and now I have to worry about weakening my calling range too much. So instead I move the bottom of my "I'm likely ahead" range into my calling range and trade it for the strongest hands I don't want to call with. This is called polarizing. At lower levels its rarely needed, so you don't start this way. But when we run into people who are positionally aware and play LAG on the button and TAG OOP, treating them like the typical transparent station is very bad. As stakes go up, this style becomes much more common, btw.

Hope this helps.

Yes the helps a lot, thanks.

Can you explain this, I'm not sure what you mean by 'If he's limping a range that isn't just the junk he won't raise'. Do you mean limping strong and weak, and raising medium strength?

Oh, and it's spelt polarised

imo the bluffs are too strong. I flat most of them. also if you have KQo you should have at least KJs and likely KTs as well--stove them vs 4b ranges (also they play similarly post).

Really see no reason to jam 99. I see a lot of reason to jam AJ+.
that's silly. choose bluff hands you think are profitable to bluff, total 3b is useless number to fix imo.

So my questions now are:
Silly to look at the whole range, your big number will come from 3b AA and co. Look at the bluff part instead, that will give you a better sense of whether you can bluff more.

at the micros i think the general population when 3betting non all-in is nutted. and i also have the feeling that a high percentage of the micro players is aware of it. so based on this, i think it is not a bad idea to 3bet a polarized range, because pre you can already expect a lot of folds (especially against frequent openers i would say, who have at least some discipline), and if called postflop you will get a lot of respect. It is very opponent dependent though.

@Coffeeyay: Brilliant. Thanks so much for that post, I think it will really help. I know I'm probably asking pretty basic questions here, but I think I'm a little slow in grasping the concepts behind why I am doing something (as opposed to just doing it because I saw someone else doing it)
Why do you like to jam AJ+? Are you usually in a bad spot if you miss (as the board generally won't hit your perceived range unless it's Kxx) or do you find that you get called by dominated aces way too often, or is it a combination of both? Or some other reason?
Can you nominate yourself for the jts leakfinder?

Here's a good article on this 3betting from Mersenneary. Here's another from him on the subject, from the other side.

This an alternative to the transparent raise=good, call=medium, fold=bad. It's when you make the call range stronger and polarize the raising range. Eg: maybe you see him limp A4o and K5s, but he's raising 50%. He can't be raising the "top 50%" because it includes hands you've seen him limp.

That's an alternative spelling: http://www.thefreedictionary.com/polarized vs http://www.thefreedictionary.com/polarised

Are you British/Australian?
http://grammarist.com/spelling/spelled-spelt/