Quote:
Originally Posted by Jon_locke
Lawdude, I think your post and reasoning is really bad. You say "there are great mathematical reasons to call here" but your math is just wrong. You can't just stove 7-8s 3 ways cold call the sb and realize so little of your equity.
Button raises J8o, we call 67s sb. Flop is A55.... What's our equity and what's our line?
Button raises J8o we 3 bet 67s sb, flop is A55, what's our equity? What's button' line?
Not to mention your further advocating taking hands that are extremely profitable 3 bets and calling with them in order to balance out weaker hands? This is just terrible as well.
1. We are talking about 87, not 67. That actually makes some difference.
2. I am not suggesting we just stove 87 suited three ways. If the equity was very close to fair share, I'd say go ahead and fold (or 3-bet to make a play). Because I agree with you that we are not going to realize all of our equity in a 3 way or heads up pot out of position.
But in fact, we have WELL over our fair share of equity against a typical stealer and BB defender (if there is one). So long as we capture a substantial amount of our equity (not all of it), we should be OK.
3. I have a question for you. You raise pocket aces. A single player 3-bets you in position. It folds around to you. Do you 4-bet? You do realize that if you just call the 3-bets, you are "calling with a hand that is extremely profitable to raise in order to balance", don't you? (A similar question-- do you always 3-bet AA or KK in the BB against a steal?)
That's what balancing involves. It involves playing hands that have different levels of value the same way for deception purposes. That often means that the top of your range will not be played for maximum value.
(EDIT: my point here is that there's quite a lot of benefit to having a cold-calling range when you are being forced to put in $10 in the small blind in a 15-30 range. To effectively have such a range, you have to engage in some balance. That doesn't mean you are going to have no 3-betting range-- just that you can pull some hands out of your 3-betting range and just call with them so that you don't always have exactly medium-strength suited connectors when you call here.
The alternative is to 3-bet your entire range, but that puts you in situations where you are bloating pots with really bad hands heads up and out of position. So it seems to me that having a cold-calling range could be +EV overall as opposed to that strategy.)
4. Your examples are cherry-picked. Clearly, whenever you are 3-betting as a bluff, you'd love to see ace high paired board flops. And anytime I see one of those flops, I'd rather be the aggressor with aces in my range than the other player.
But how about the rest of the flops? Imagine, for instance, having a calling range with A4 suited and 87 suited in it, along with some other stuff, and check-raising an A72 flop with two suits. Now you can have a flush draw, the 7 you actually have if you have 87, or an ace. I like that situation. And you might have put a bit of dead money in the pot by folding out the BB after he put in 2 bets pre-flop. In contrast, if you 3-bet pre-flop, you are now barreling away heads up with middle pair and lots of reverse implied odds.
To be clear, MY example is cherry picked too. But you can't answer these complex questions of playability by just positing the most bluffable flop in the world for a 3-bettor and saying you'd rather be the 3-bettor.
Last edited by lawdude; 03-03-2015 at 06:14 PM.