Quote:
Originally Posted by jdr0317
There's a lot of hands that are between 25% and 34% equity that we'd want to see a flop with 3 handed, but are spewy to cap with.
55-, A8s-, QTs-Q9s, KTs-K8s, JTs-J9s, T9s-T8s, 98s, A9o, KJo, QJo are all hands that can justifiably enter the pot raising a raise and a 3 bet, but 4 betting them is spew.
So rather than base a 4 bet or fold strat around playing:
66+ , A9s+, KJs+, ATo+, KQo, QJs (11.0%)
We add those hands in and have 20.7% of preflop hands.
If I'm against weak players, I'll happily bifurcate and cap the good stuff and call the marginal stuff.
This is certainly the currently en vogue way to think about this. But here is some food for thought:
1. You probably don't want to play some of the hands that barely have their fair share of equity here. You have both bad absolute and relative position here-- you are acting after the aggressor, and you are not acting last. Specifically, of the hands you mention, I would single out 55 as a hand I would expect to be -EV even if it theoretically has its fair share of equity. It's going to be incredibly hard to play it post-flop the 7 out of 8 times you don't flop a set.
2. Capping has some advantages too, even if it means you are "spewing" with some of the hands at the bottom of your range. For one thing, it represents strength and may actually allow you to get some cheaper cards post-flop, paying 1 bet instead of 2 to draw on the flop, for instance. Also, it solves the relative position problem, as instead of acting directly after the aggressor, you are now the aggressor.
3. I should probably do a separate post here on this, but this might be a good spot to bring this up. I have played against a number of people who post here. (Not, to my knowledge, jdr, by the way, who I have heard great things about.) And I have found that, in practice, some people gamble it up a lot more than they admit here. In other words, other than a couple of hands like 55, I find jdr's ranges pretty reasonable honestly EITHER for calling a 3-bet or capping against typically aggressive late position raisers and 3-bettors in a mid-stakes game. But in practice, I've seen people, including 2+2 posters, calling FAR broader ranges out of the big blind in this situation. 65 suited shows up a ton here, for instance.
Further, I have seen these same broad ranges show up even when the raiser and 3-bettor have more narrow ranges (for instance, when the raise comes from a TAG in early position and the 3-bet from a smart player who takes ranges into account from the small blind).
In other words, I get the feeling that for a significant number of players, even if technically in a perfect world calling 100 percent of your range is a more +EV play, just capping a narrower range would be +EV FOR THEM because it acts as a disciplinary device. (Similar to the way that not cold-calling a single raise in position pre-flop acts as something of a disciplinary device, because if you are in "3-bet or fold" mode you dump some of the things you might be willing to cold call with like suited connectors.)
At any rate, not saying anyone has to go back to capping. Just saying that there are arguments in favor of capping a slightly narrower range rather than calling 100 percent of a slightly broader range here.