on a serious note donovan,
you cant be looking at 3bets ranges from the blinds alone,
the reason you get 3bet by blinds way more otb than in EP should be obvious,
and i think at 200nl+ the majority will adjust somewhat (perhaps not enough) when you really open your EP opening range

when you notice you have trouble coping with the high amounts of 3bets you can try:
- opening fewer hands
- 4betbluffing more
- stacking off lighter

and obv my first post was a troll, this one isnt though

On a serious note, people need to work on balancing their 2+2 levels.

I heard stealing from UTG works better if open sizing is 3.5bb.

See,..these people ARE actually being serious. Well, some of them.. I honestly think there are two schools of thought here and each one thinks the other is being sarcastic.

I'm not the only one who thinks these people sound like they are leveling and trolling..i'm also not the only one confused about what is what/which is which. I didn't CHOOSE not to listen. There's just a lot of leveling that goes on here. When I started a thread that was called "UTG, the new bttn??" I bet a ton of people thought i was being totally literal and decided to troll before reading my post. It really is hard for me, and it seems others, to tell who's being sincere and who is not.

I mean even the post I quoted above, that sounds a bit like a level because UTG cannot possibly be the new button.

And look at the advice given to open >40% from UTG but only open AQ+, decent pairs, and suited connectors for balance. On one hand it looks like a total level as I doubt the dude is honestly opening 40% from UTG and he's unlikey to fold AJ if action folds to his button right? But if you take the exact ranges he mentioned out of it then it sounds totally legitimate.

No. On a serious note, the retarded leveling that goes on here should have stopped over 2 years ago.

yeah, your troll wasn't quite as well hidden as the others but thanks for the honest reply all the same.
See, i have been grinding out the low micros again for a while and JUST got back to the NL100 games. I know for a fact that my UTG raises are stealing the blinds at a higher % than my bttn raises and that i am getting 3 bet a TON more from LP than from UTG. But i also play pretty tight UTG and loosen up some from LP and i dont 4 bet as often as i should and fold too much to re-steals prolly. So i could not possibly descern if this was a mix of variance and players exploiting MY style vs an over all trend. After all, i only play as me

And it is obvious why people 3 bet more from OOP vs a LP open than 3 bet against UTG opens.

The thing is though, there REALLY is a good reason to open lighter from LP and a great reason to not open as wide from EP... it REALLY TRULY does suck to play OOP and you REALLY TRULY will have to bluff through more players to get a steal to work from EP, and when you get called you have to play OOP.

This trend of 3 betting light from BB vs ATS's and opening light from EP is SUPER exploitable. If "good players" are doing this a lot now...the "great players" will be dismantling them for it soon enough.. right?

You can level and level and level but at the end of the day position IS power and 3 betting light against LP raises is SUPER exploitable as well as stealing a lot from UTG... Agreed?

Opening too wide UTG is very exploitable, 3betting light against LP raises is only exploitable if they give off some timing/bet sizing tell or do it in an unbalanced fashion.

Yeah, but i have a good idea for exploiting the SB/BB's light 3 bets vs my LP raises...call them. You know what I mean? I mean, yeah, the light 3 bets should be enough to stop you from TOTALLY abusing the bttn, it was a necessary countermeasure designed to stop players from opening ATC profitably. I get all of that.

After all the leveling (essentially high stakes rock paper scissors anyway) "levels" out; there is NO WAY that the players in the blinds should be able to win long term vs the button. JUST PERIOD! And when all this starts to reach some sort of equilibrium and trend back down (which it will, it always does) I think we'll see a lot less light 3 betting from the blinds. But in an equilibrium state we still HAVE to be able to open more hands from LP than EP profitably. If players adjust in a way that makes UTG opens have more fold equity than LP opens, straight up and down, there is a 100% chance that they are doing something super exploitable.

I think these battles from ATS positions and the blinds turn into pre-flop raising wars SO often that the LP players is just totally GIVING away his positional advantage. Why not just open a bit tighter than a few years back but be willing to call the 3 bet lighter than usual, in position, and just play poker? I know that when I 3 bet the bttn from the SB/BB the last thing i really want him doing is to just keep flat calling me.

The OOP player either folding or raising vs bttn/co, or even Hi-Jack seems to make some sense to me. But why would I, as the LP player, play into the OOP players hand and raise or fold back?

Thoughts?

well. look at trueteller, he opens like 25% from button. and he is one of the top high stakes players. on the other side, this guy mayo opens 25% from utg. it seems like the optimal strategy, nowaways, is to open the same from every position. no edge in opening more form latter, as everybody does the same. remember that there has got to be an edge for the money to flow, if everybody does the same, then there is no money flow.

Yes, agreed, sorry totally forgot about AJ. I would also open AJs from the Bu, and possibly AJo depending on how aggressive the BB defends.

aj gets 3bet by ak and aq.. so you are totally dominated
you have to be one sick spewtard to open ajo otb

OK, now I'm TOTALLY on board

haha