I'm not worried about giving away information, I'm just saying that if we never cap here then 3betting instantly becomes more profitable for the button since he never has to worry about being capped and will play the rest of the hand with the initiative and position. We're also losing a ton of value with our strongest hands since its multiway and we're either giving up 3 sb preflop, or 1 sb and adding two dead small bets, which is probably even better. Like I said I'm not sure exactly how important it is since we don't know whether BTN 3bets enough naturally for it to make a difference or whether he's capable of adjusting, but it's something to consider.

If we're talking about ranges here, though, I'd have a bit wider calling range and certainly a wider capping range than what you have listed.

Whether or not our playing range should be tight (I am thinking you are overgenerous for the BB's playing range in a three-way multibet pot), I think we should either cap-or-fold or flat-call-or-fold.

We make ourselves too easy to play against when we split our range into two pieces without balancing, and mixing strong hands and weaker hands into each range gets complicated.

If we play call-or-fold, not only do we get to play a wider range than cap-or-fold (making us harder to read), but we also extract a bit of information about the opener's hand, by seeing what they do when the action gets back to them.

Okay, I just fired up Poker Stove and found something out.

First, let's give the villains some ranges.

The CO is 31/23/0 after 13 hands. LOLsamplesizeaments. But our first guess based on this tiny sample size is that, to first order, they are a decent player at least preflop. Let's give them the WITHG recommended CO opening range: {22+, A2s+, K5s+, Q9s+, J8s+, T8s+, 97s+, 87s, 76s, A5o+, K9o+, QTo+}

We have 29 hands on BTN, and the numbers are 24/7/8. This looks like a typical online TAGfish. They are snug when they raise, and at least as snug when they three-bet. I'm giving them {88+, ATs+, KQs, AKo}, a top-5% range.

What hands do we want to play against these two? It's a three-way pot, so we want at least 33.3% equity[1]. The resulting range turns out to be {TT+, AKs, AKo}.

Our playing range here is really snug, because we're guessing that BTN's 3-betting range is snug, based on the scant data we've seen. But if we widen BTN's range, our playing range is not going to widen very quickly.

Based on this stoving, I'm going to change my answer from flat-call AJs to easy-peasy fold.

[1] We're out of position, and equity calculations don't include postflop playability. We probably really want a margin of safety in our equity to compensate. But I'm leaving that out for now.

First of all, against your CO and BTN ranges, I'm showing ~33% equity with capping 77+, A9s+, KJs+, QJs, ATo+, and KQo. Your TT+, AKs, AKo range has ~45% equity. This isn't even considering the possibility that CO folds preflop, which should happen some small portion of the time creating dead money.

Ignoring that, you think BTN doesn't 3bet AQo? KQo? Really? If we're assuming this guy will round out to be something like a 24/12 type player FR, I'd give him a range of 77+, A9S+, AJo+, KJs+, KQo and would consider this on the conservative end. There's also a good chance he 3bets something like 55+ or hands like QJs, but we'll leave them out.

Using your CO range and my BTN range, we have 36% equity capping with 77+, A9s+, KJs+, QJs, ATo+, KQo. That's showing a profit even if we completely remove the possibility of CO folding preflop. If you're folding AJs here, you're burning money big time.

Whoops, I left out the dead small blind and the already-posted big blind money.

If we expect that the CO is just going to call after us if we call, then we only need more than 2/9.4 = 21.2% equity to play. But they can raise behind us, and we're out of position, and we have to show down to realize showdown equity yadda yadda. Let's put in that margin of safety I mentioned above, say, 5%, and demand 27% equity. The resulting range is: {88+, ATs+, KJs+, QJs, AQo+}, with just a few combos more than I suggested in my original reply to catfacemeowmers.

The {TT+, AKs, AKo} range would be our capping range, if we didn't care about splitting our range in two. But, as I said, that's a really snug range, and we leave ourselves wide open to good handreaders if we do that.

imo, If you don't fold here then you're doing all right. Both 4-betting and coldcalling have some merit. We're likely holding a hand with above average equity so our cap would be for immediate value, but coldcalling allows us to make use of some relatively good information about the BTN's hand range and lets us avoid those difficult first decisions when you have initiative on the flop against multiple raisers.

When the 3-bettors hand range is fairly well defined that helps us identify boards that are good for us to check/raise. When we check/raise we're putting a lot of hands in the CO's wider range to a tough decision. Flopped 2nd or 3rd pair may be induced to fold against our flop raise and many other hands simply need to forfeit significant equity in a relatively large pot.

Can you copy and paste your pokerstove report for these ranges? I put in my range, which is wider than yours, and got 33% equity against the two ranges. It's completely possible I've made a mistake with the software, though. Like I said, I have the TT+, AKs, AKo range having 45% equity which tells me that it's way too tight for capping.

catmeowmers, you are making the mistake of confusing hand vs. range equity and range vs. range equity. The capping range you are suggesting does have 36% equity overall versus the other two ranges, but it includes individual hands that have rather less than 33% equity, hands that are money-losers when we raise with them.

To find a profitable range to play against a villain's range, we have to find the weakest hand in each class (e.g. weakest pair, weakest suited ace, weakest suited king, etc.) that are profitable to play against the villain's range. Our range will be the weakest hands and everything stronger. The overall equity of the whole range will be substantially greater than break-even, because there are substantially profitable hands as well as as hands just above breakeven.

If that's the case then don't we have way too strong of a range in this spot? It seems like we're narrowing our range to the point of becoming very easy to play against and sacrificing our .5 BB too often. I'm not sure I've ever really heard the argument of making sure that the bottom of your range is stronger than the villain's entire range, and so it's entirely possible that I've been missing out on something major, but it does seem very counter-intuitive to me.