Ive been thinking about 3betting from the blinds vs flatting from the blinds. Im gonna try and outline a few thoughts and would like input on the forum.

1) When people are calling 3bets wide you should increase your value 3betting range. So say someone who opens 35% on the button and calls 50% when you 3bet from the blinds. You should be 3betting nearly all broadway and suited broadway hands for value because they will be calling worse?

2) In general i believe that you should be 3betting less oop because your creating large pots when you will have to play later streets out of position. So in general we should only be doing this when we have a card advantage compared to our oppponents calling range.

3) Do you believe the opputunity cost of flatting is more because you keep in more dominated hands? For example, villan opens button and we flat KJ. Villan will probably open every Kx so we will keep alot of there dominated hands in the pot. Wheras if we 3bet we might fold out nearly all worse and get calls from better.

4) against people who call alot your range should be merged and not include bluff hands? against people who fold alot you can polorize your range to nuts/air hands. Your air range should be the best hands you cant flat profitably oop?

5) I see alot of people 3betting suited connectors and suited aces oop from the blinds. What players is this best against?

6) how do you figure out what are the worst hands you can flat oop. I have no idea if i can play hands like 78s, 9ts, a4s oop against a steal profitably. If i cant, should i be 3betting them?

7) i know i can 3bet hands like AJ AQ KQ TT profitably but sometimes i feel like i can make more flatting them pre and playing flops agressive by chk raising when we miss and when we hit. obv i guess it depends on who were playing against.

8) i almost always flat hands like QJs JTs 9Ts because there sexy hands but dont do great against calling ranges to 3bets. thoughts?

Ive seen various conflicting concepts being passed around like you shouldnt build big pots oop with marginal hands. But then being told you should 3bet frequently because peoples range for opening is so wide. Should you be basing the hands you 3bet on a sliding scale of how often villans call your 3bet. So the lighter they call the lighter u 3bet for value?

anway, this was kinda random. these thoughts would probably be better placed on my blog but im gonna get more response posting them on here.

Don't really disagree with any of it. Could talk about small/mid pairs here as well. Also the difference between flatting out of BB vs SB (primarily because of squeezes, secondarily because of pot odds). And I don't think this hypothetical player that calls 50% exists (at least as far as regulars)

i see alot of regs calling 3bets with something like 25-35% of there open range. it seems like people call more when there in position compared to when you 3bet them and they are oop. This is kinda weird since you range should be stronger when your oop? Theres ususally a 10%+ difference between them flatting when u 3bet the blinds compared to when they are oop despite having a stronger range from the binds.

Are you saying that you should maybe 3bet more from the sb to avoid getting squeezed and say flat more from the bb because your getting slightly better odds and cant get squeezed. so say. A4s vs btn steal, you may 3bet the sb and flat the bb with more freq. Would anyone considder folding small suited aces oop?

n1 squiz

i kinda think its hard to draw the line between whats too thin for value. and if its a too thin 3bet i guess you should be flatting it. Also i think its interesting figuring out how different players adjust to it. Some people just look at your overall 3bet % or how active you have been in that session to try and guess when they should flat or 4bet you. at 400nl i see less people who are playing really exploitable and more who are calling and 4betting a semi decent frequency. you still get people who fold too much, these people you can do it with almost anytwo cards. Sometimes i do it so much and get to the point where i think im inducing 4bets and then the dynamic changes. Im not sure if i like taking it too that point or if its better to abuse there leaks less obviously. when you 3bet to the point where you think ur inducing 4bets i think your getting into a guessing game. if you feel like you are getting there my typical adjustments are to 3bet hands that play good to 5bet over shoves. So this might be pairs like 66-99 which i would ususally flat and then 5b shove them. also, i will take out hands like the tweeners say AJ AQ etc because i will have to fold them if i get 4bet. some players adjust differently, some will either start flatting more others will start 4betting as a bluff but its usuallly semi transparent.

/end rambling

IDK my 3 bet range is kinda narrow from the blinds. Usually along the lines of AK, AQ, TT-AA. Of course if I have Mr. Open Operson betting more than his fair share I will open it up a bit and depending on how he reacts it might not be too much because I am OOP. I would much rather call and play ball esp. because a lot of players are not comfortable with getting Chk raised and having to stick money in with air/overs/under pairs.

Squiz, i think this is a good direction; very productive use of a break-even stretch.

TBH, I don't think this topic matters all that much. It's incredibly difficult to get an edge by 3-betting preflop since all the hands have similar equity. Not only that, but you have to risk so much to win relatively little.

Example: to win a pot of 4.5bb (one 3x raise plus blinds), you risk 10-12bb with a 3 bet. Contrast that with mixing in a lead at a baby flop: 5bb to win 7.5bb. Or, how about a flop check-raise: 15bb risk to win 12.5bb (7.5bb pre, plus 5bb cb). Either a flop raise or a lead has to work far less often to be profitable than a 3b.

1)
Your range against 35*50 is this
Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

63,810,720,864 games 0.062 secs 1,029,205,175,225 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 50.334% 47.83% 02.50% 30523416600 1594857788.00 { TT+, ATs+, KTs+, QTs+, JTs, ATo+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo }
Hand 1: 49.666% 47.17% 02.50% 30097588688 1594857788.00 { 66+, A5s+, K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, ATo+, KTo+, QTo+ }


---

When it is this close. You will be out of position. So you better be damn sure you can play post flop better than your opponent.

2)
Who is the better player postflop in 3bet pots?

3)
Look at villains calling to 3bet stat. Everybody is different.

4)
Usually it is like this. But when they fold also. Then you must put in bluffs as well.

5)
Against people who either call too much or people who fold too much to your 3bet.

6)
I can not figure this out myself. I believe mixing it up is pretty good.

7)
Yes.

8)
3bet them as well along with your other hands.

If they call a lot, you should have stronger SD hands like AJ. If they fold a lot, you can 3bet what ever. Also fold to 3bet is important.

I believe if people left to act behind of you SQ a lot. Then 3bet is preferred rather than calling. And this by a lot. Unless you are deep enough to over call 4bet strong hands as well as bluffs. And the money needs to be deep like 150bb. And it is a very dangerous and volatile game to be playing. And you need to be good postflop when this happen. Especially since you easy could be oop when this happens.

If you have been 3betting a lot lately against a specific opponent or got high 3bet percentage in general. I believe folding is better than calling. But can be difficult to practice for the human brain.

Very good thoughts OP, I think you left out a very significant factor how the opponent plays post flop (if there is enough post flop game to be played with all this 4/5/6-betting wars going on).

One example is what nlsnakeyes520 said about flatting pre and c-r post
Or there are players who call a 3-bet very light preflop but they play fit or fold post.
Other players who call 3-bets, float flops and then give up UI
Other guys who call 3-bets and then raise flops with unbalanced ranges

Or ppl who multibarrel too much when you flat pre or cbet too much (you can c-r them) or others that you can donk bet them effectively etc

So I think that we should be more on the conservative side playing less/smaller pots OOP and balancing more, until we get good reads

I only 3bet nut/air hands so people pay me off when I have AA. It's probably completely exploitable, but no one knows each other's finite range for preflop without really playing them HU or like one tabling for days which no one does.

Ive been thinking about 3betting from the blinds vs flatting from the blinds. Im gonna try and outline a few thoughts and would like input on the forum.

1) When people are calling 3bets wide you should increase your value 3betting range. So say someone who opens 35% on the button and calls 50% when you 3bet from the blinds. You should be 3betting nearly all broadway and suited broadway hands for value because they will be calling worse?

depends largely on their post flop play. If their calling wide and raising or floating a high % of flops, sucks to have K or A high, yeah?

2) In general i believe that you should be 3betting less oop because your creating large pots when you will have to play later streets out of position. So in general we should only be doing this when we have a card advantage compared to our oppponents calling range.

depends largely on opponents tendencies, skill level and lots on stack size, no?

3) Do you believe the opputunity cost of flatting is more because you keep in more dominated hands? For example, villan opens button and we flat KJ. Villan will probably open every Kx so we will keep alot of there dominated hands in the pot. Wheras if we 3bet we might fold out nearly all worse and get calls from better.

sometimes? I mean game flow and their calling and stickiensss ranges matter lots to me.

4) against people who call alot your range should be merged and not include bluff hands? against people who fold alot you can polorize your range to nuts/air hands. Your air range should be the best hands you cant flat profitably oop?

depends on what they do post, doesn't it?

5) I see alot of people 3betting suited connectors and suited aces oop from the blinds. What players is this best against?

best? those that you're deep with? Those that play fit or fold?

6) how do you figure out what are the worst hands you can flat oop. I have no idea if i can play hands like 78s, 9ts, a4s oop against a steal profitably. If i cant, should i be 3betting them?

there are 3 streets in poker. How do they play each one? How do you play each one? In other words and in it's simplest form (it's way more difficult than this) what are you willing to c/r and 3 barrel and what are they willing to call/call/call w?

7) i know i can 3bet hands like AJ AQ KQ TT profitably but sometimes i feel like i can make more flatting them pre and playing flops agressive by chk raising when we miss and when we hit. obv i guess it depends on who were playing against.

Yay!

8) i almost always flat hands like QJs JTs 9Ts because there sexy hands but dont do great against calling ranges to 3bets. thoughts?

stacks? Game condidtions? Are you IP or OOP?

Ive seen various conflicting concepts being passed around like you shouldnt build big pots oop with marginal hands. But then being told you should 3bet frequently because peoples range for opening is so wide. Should you be basing the hands you 3bet on a sliding scale of how often villans call your 3bet. So the lighter they call the lighter u 3bet for value?

anway, this was kinda random. these thoughts would probably be better placed on my blog but im gonna get more response posting them on here.

Post flop tendencies matter lots. Calling ranges are second.

turns out that in today's mid stakes games, I suck, hence, this is all magical theory to me.

gl

2) In general i believe that you should be 3betting less oop because your creating large pots when you will have to play later streets out of position. So in general we should only be doing this when we have a card advantage compared to our oppponents calling range.



sorta missed the boat with this one and everything else just seems to be stuff that's been rehashed like 37 times, no?

I only flat hands like QJs T9s A4s etc if they have a very wide range (say 35%+) and their 3b fold is 50% or lower.

Against someone who has a range of less than 30% and calls 3b 50% or lower I'm mostly just folding and sometimes 3b and sometimes call.

If in doubt then go by how well they play against you postflop, if they are good players then just dump your t9s hands and if they suck then call.

dr squizzel definitely isnt breaking any new ground in poker theory