Hi,

I have a pretty well defined 3-betting strat from the SB, but I almost exclusively flat out of the BB. I want to go about creating a baseline strategy for the BB vs a BTN open. I know that exploitative plays will change from player to player but I just want a baseline strategy.

From the SB I 3-bet about 16% of hands vs a fairly wide button open. I would say the average button open is about 40-48% at the site I play (which is Ignition, has anonymous players etc.) I rarely flat hands in the SB. I am curious as to how I can create a good strategy from the BB. What % hands to 3 bet would be about right? Any suggestions?

Well, a very simple rule is the following. If you are pretty confident about button’s opening range, then you should 3-bet the same range. By doing that your equity is 50% and given a fixed fold equity, raise size has no effect on EV but it is positive. If fold equity increases with bet size (up to a point) as one would expect, then the larger the bet, the higher your profit.

The following illustration shows one example of such an analysis where the fold equity function against button is defined by hero as being moderate, button raises to 4.5bb and hero makes a raise of 5bb. For this fe function, button folds about 11% of the time and hero’s EV = 1.8bb.

9-15%. Mostly use your strongest value hands (77+, AQ+) and balance with suited aces and suited Broadways JTs+. With reads (or player pool tendencies) you can alter your range to be more or less polarized. i.e. If villain is likely to fold pretty often, you can mix in some airballs and weak stuff like K2s or 63s or A7o; hands that don't do particularly well as flats. If he's going to call a lot, you want hands that play well OOP.
As a baseline, just consider the 12-16% range that you'd typically open UTG in a 6-max game. All those hands are decent hands to 3-bet in BB v BTN. (Or indeed SB v BTN). You don't have to 3-bet all those hands all the time (it's nice to flat with some good, but not great heads), but there's definitely nothing "wrong" with 3-betting AJo or A6s or KQo or QTs from time to time.

cool. Thank you both. I am going to formulate my strat and give an update.

What do you guys think of a pure raise/fold strategy out of the BB?

It doesn't really make sense out of the BB. Out of the SB playing your range as a fold/3bet vs a BTN open is totally fine, but if BTN decides to minraise then it becomes even closer and having a flatting range in the SB starts to make more sense. If the BTN min raises and we're playing raise/fold in the BB we're either 3betting way too much or folding way too much.

Remember, one of the keys to playing out of the BB is that your call doesn't have to be +EV, it just has to be less -EV than losing 1 bb. For example, if your call in the BB produces a net EV of -0.9bb then call > fold; you "make" 0.1bb more by calling than by folding, or more accurately, you lose less.

Rake affects this a lot so take it with a grain of salt. Calls that might be -0.99bb without rake are almost certainly losing calls with rake.