If we take away the coldcaller in the middle, the situation changes a lot. It's harder for me to come up with a hand/situation in which I'd just call from SB against an open-raiser.

But against this range:

You're not doing that well with 55 or A7s, so you must be believing that you can push him out of the pot later.

And against this range:

You're doing better, but I don't think that it should be automatic.

Anyone care to play the "Guess the equity" game of 55 and A7s (individually) against these ranges?

against the second range: 55 = 42% equity. A7s = 40% equity. guessing of course.

I kinda totally disagree.
You can have a soft game but still have good players (1 or 2) in it.
And if those 1 or 2 other player would have position ( even 2 or 3 seat of your left) on you I think you would get totally kill in that game with that range.

You really think those guys wouldn't react seeing you try to keep the fish all to yourself...?

I mean there is soft game and there is SOFT game that could be called great game I suppose which I kind of never see anymore.

33,A7 from HJ to be profitable is not soft , it's great game condition...

Those hands play aweful oop vs 3bet range.

Nobody even 3 bet us yet though.

No, I don't think that they would react correctly at all just by seeing the bottom of my range. I think they're going to react poorly if they react at all.

Ok, lets pretend you magically get dropped on my left. The first two hands you see me open raise with from that position are 33 and A7o. What are you going to 3 bet against me in the future when I open from the HJ? Does A9o make the cut? How about KTs?

For you or for me ?
Just cutting A7 to A9 that makes 32combo .
Yeah it should

I meant to ask what is your 3 betting range vs me with this knowledge about my range?

i dont know cause i do not play much exploitative poker really cause i just cant find those guy opening up that wide but something like 66,AT,JTs,QTs,kts, AT,KJ shoud do pretty good i think.

all i am saying is 33 and A7o, hands like that oop are extremely hard to play good vs any aggressive opponent.
You will often pay the max and win the min.
And this is when you get 3bet, lets say the aggro 3bettor pass is turn, it is far from being sure you will win the hand anyway vs 2 other passif player.
True you will lose less but still the cost of pf is adding up quickly unless you run good.

If your opening range in a particular position includes A7o and 33, you are raising at least something like 48% of the time, and is something like {33+, A2s+, K2s+, Q2s+, J4s+, T6s+, 96s+, 86s+, 76s, 65s, A2o+, K5o+, Q7o+, J8o+, T8o+, 98o}

(Method: open up the card matrix in Equilab and move the slider until the range contains both A7o and 33. That range looks a lot like the Winning in Tough Holdem Games for opening on the button, although I think in fact the pair range is 22+.)

A9o does pretty well against that range:

We can plug various cards into the hero's hand to find the edge cases where the hero's hand is break-even against that rage. If we successfully isolate the villain, the folded blinds sweeten the pot and we only need 40% to break even. But in real-life games there are idiot coldcallers as well as tenacious blinds, and that should affect our three-betting range.

Also, in the isolation situation the opener might or might not four-bet. (It's tough to balance, so I recommend against it, but most naive players don't know this and so will have a 4-betting range rather tighter than their opening range, and so that is going to figure into our profitablility.

But all that is very hard and complicated, so let's be like Warren Buffet and just include a "margin of safety" in our equity requirement. Say, 50% rather than 40%.

Go to work with Equilab and work it out. Have fun.

(If you are playing online with a HUD, it can be a useful thing to have done this for a number of PFR percentages, say, 10% through 50%, and have post-its by your playing setup with the 3! ranges for each level. Then you can adjust to the other players on the fly in short order.)

Because someone opens A7o that means they should be raising A2o as well? There are a lot of times when I would open A7o but not A2o, and also wouldn't open a lot of the other hands on that list.

By the time that slider includes 33+, all the offsuit aces are in the raising range.

Does the slider just use heads up all-in equity to create rankings? Those ranges don't reflect real-life ranges.

Ok that's about a 15% range. Add another 5% of the time that someone else picks up a monster, and I'm getting 3 bet about 20% of the time. In a tough game, I would expect to be 3 bet much more often. So due to the low 3 betting frequency behind me, I should be able to open more hands than is considered standard for tough games. I think 33 and A7o make the cut because of that.

I agree. I don't think they're easy hands to play, but easy to play doesn't equate to profitability.

I think this is a big misconception of playing bluffcatchers. Are they so value heavy that I never win unimproved by check calling 3 streets? Then I'll exploit that by folding when they bet and winning often unimproved when they check.

really?
Well imo not making mistake because a hand is easy to play, is profitable.

The problem with these hands, if you face someone that is correctly balance you will get bluffed out pretty easily or get value own hard.
If you think vs any decent player, position do not matter and can be has profitable IP and OOP with those hands, well go ahead.
Me i know i just cant.

I dont think so unless you would still play that range which i really doubt.

Seems like you're not even trying to think about ev here.

If I face someone that's correctly balanced, then my bluffcatchers will essentially break even when I call down and then when they check I'm realizing expectation for free.

In a tough game where everyone 3 bets or folds facing a raise, you will be 3 bet much more no matter if you play a standard range or a slightly loose range. To deny this fact of poker is just obtuse at best.

This is a pretty strong statement/assumption about your own play, and I strongly suspect it's not actually true in reality. I know you've invested a lot of time/effort into studying GTO and working out strategies, but I'm doubtful that you're actually able to implement it on the fly in an effective manner. This looks more like wishful thinking.

I mean, it's possible that you're killing it at any game you're sitting down in, but I would be highly skeptical of such a claim.

Montreals assumption was that there's a crusher sitting behind me 3 betting my hj open with 15% range. I made no statement of my own play.

Ok let's pretend for a moment that I get 3 bet by a balanced crusher on the button and we go heads up, worst case scenario, right?

Now, 33 has a little over 40% equity vs that range. I would agree that if you're gonna check fold when you miss your set, then yeah opening 33 is pretty bad. However, about half of that 40% equity is tied up in unimproved showdown value. You guys think that just because there's a good player behind us, we can't realize this equity? That's an interesting magic trick, making 20% equity just disappear due to the good player behind us.

This really cracks me up actually; the idea that a crusher is gonna sit two to my left in an 8/16 game and think "oh **** that guy opened A7o and 33 in the hj. I better widen my 3 bet range to exploit his -ev open raises." is just absurd. If and when a crusher sits an 8/16 game, I would imagine that he's going to be looking at the cutoff from the original post that coldcalled first in after a raise and he will devote most, if not all of his mental energy to exploiting the terrible cutoff.

I think the crusher would actually target both players .
Knowing the c/c has an even weaker hand range than the lag .

Anyway, you talk like having a wider range with hands like 33,A7o, etc are even easier to play OOP vs any decent ( no need of being it a crusher) tag or lag than if you had a tighter range .

I just doubt it.
Glad if I am wrong .

How? Because I'm aware that cards have equity in the pot? I don't mean to say that these are easy hands to play because they're not easy to play. However, you seem to be assuming that if you play these hands then you're going to make numerous -ev plays postflop. This is your problem with discounting your own poker abilities as well as discounting your equity in the pot.