Hi all,

2/5. Btn is lagtard and pretty much opens close to 100% folded to him. BB is good reg. Folds to v on btn and he opens $20. Hero 3! 88 $65 SB. BB folds, V calls. $750 eff.

Previous hand hero 3! AK against v's co open on btn and he called, called a $75 cbet on T84 and turns and rivers checked through and v won with J4dd.

Flop ($130): J-9-4r. Hero?

Thanks,
DT

Why 3 bet pre? You know he is calling your 3 bet and now you are OOP with a middle pair

Ckf. Great calling hand pre. Sizing horrendous.

Calling pre seems atrocious. Why invite BB to fight with us over fish money, or squeeze? 88 has a large equity edge and plays pretty well post-flop in HU pots against wide ranges. It doesn't play so well multi-way OOP.

Check and evaluate sizing now, probably folding. 88 is going to be pretty low in our checking range here. It's just a bad flop for our hand.

3b much better than call pre, sizing should be bigger though. I x/eval as well, but leaning towards calling vs reasonable sizes. V is going to be peeling the 3b very wide so we should be doing well enough vs his stabs and can turn equity on a couple cards.

i like 80 or 85 pre.

as previously states, u cant flat here and let the BB destroy.

AP looking like a x/f

no one wants to bet once (70?) and give up like previous hand?

sizing was good hes going to call anyways IMO.

i would rather call pre if the BB was worse, but this is a 3! now

Lol @ calling pre. The live poker bleeds from the veins.

85 pre. You’re giving him too good of a price to peel you.

Check fold is probably fine


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This sounds correct to me. This hand is probably good enough to continue on the flop to a reasonable size.

I actually agree with Amanaplan. This hand can easily fit into a calling range here.
Again, the rampant theory of 3!/fold everything from SB lives on.
There are hands that can be calls. This can be one of them.

Problem with calling is good reg bb will squeeze wide if given opportunity. I didn't want that to happen. I agree $80 is better oop. I was a little nervous since I'm not used to 3! SB with a middling holding.

I checked flop, v bet $100. I didn't think I could call for that price. Some in pg&c said bet $55 to fold out his garbage and keep initiative. I dunno. J9x seems to hit his range hard.

^you are still allowed to fold if that happens.

3b vs call is not a question of whether we play a purely 3b/f strat from sb here (I would also have a calling range). We 3b bc V is likely opening 80+% from btn (way too wide) and 88 is basically a monster that also happens to benefit a lot from folding out trashy over card hands, shutting bb out with a lot of the hands he would have called/squeezed with, and avoiding playing from worst absolute and relative position post flop.

^that’s fair. But it’s also fair that big blind coming along as well isn’t that awful for us.
And further to your point, why is the common consensus that we just check/fold or bet/fold from everyone here given your very true above statement about V’s BTN opening range? We just assume his top 80% hand hits a jack or at least a 9?

Bb coming along is actually pretty bad for us, basically bc the outcomes when we don’t flop a set are much worse with bb in the pot.

By the time btn bets or raises his range is much stronger than 80+%, since he will be folding a decent chunk to the 3b and then checking back (or calling/folding facing a bet). There are also 2 streets left and we have basically a bluff catcher that we will have to fold later much of the time (we cannot realize all of our equity).

^he called a $75 cbet with J-4 as low pair in the example hand.
You really think him calling a $65 3! with $20 out there narrows his range at all?
Because I really don’t.
I also don’t think him betting flop on the BTN once the SB 3! checks to him would change his range hardly at all either.
And I fail to see why bb coming along in this scenario is as awful as anyone else. It actually isn’t nearly as bad as everyone assumes.

It’s actually insane spew to just 3! to eliminate bb from the equation pre when we’re intending on check/folding flops when there’s two overcards to our 8’s (which will happen fairly frequently).

Pre: I think it’s ok to 3b or flat. At 750 eff, set mining for 20 flat is fine. If bb squeezes, we can flat with a good hand.

But what’s not good is 3b without a game plan post flop. H has taken the initiative and I think should cbet. The whole point of isolation play was to punish this guy for being too wide. So bet, otherwise why bother with the iso play?

We don’t have to check fold every two over flop to our 88 (and I’m beginning to think we shouldn’t here). However we simply aren’t exploiting this opponent if we aren’t making it expensive for him preflop.

Just for example, watch the gambley regular players in your game who have raise first in tendencies of like 40%+. You’d think this guy would get killed. But then he doesn’t. Why? Well, no one exploits him. He gets called. Then the flop happens. And if no one hit, he wins.

Constantly making these dudes raise fold, or put 10-15% of their stack in pre with weak ranges, is how to exploit them.

I come from a FL background. I can ensure you that all the guys who get frustrated and wonder why they don’t win when they play “good hands” are also the ones who flat small blinds with good not great hands and put themselves in a position to lose way more than they win

Anyway, I’ve changed my mind and we should absolutely be check calling this flop. It’s unlikely our 3 bet size defined his range at all and he could have all sorts of stabs.


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It’s hard to judge the flop play in the example hand without knowing more. Once he peels the 3b (obviously terrible), calling one street with bottom pair is arguably fine (again, it might not be, but we don’t know enough about hero).

I think your assumptions wrt Vs ranges narrowing are wrong (and would recommend looking at the hands that make up 50-80th percentile to see how bad those hands are), but in any event if you think he’s calling our 3b with like 70+% of hands then it’s absolutely criminal not to 3b 88 here. Wrt flop play, when someone suggests x/f, it is implied that they are using assumptions on Vs range narrowing that are different than yours. Using your assumptions, we would obviously not x/f. Either way, 3b is much better than calling pre.

The reasons for bb coming along being bad have to do with the types of hands we generally flop (2nd/3rd pair etc) and how much value they have with 2 players vs 3, given our position and the ways the action is likely to unfold (folding the best hand a lot and giving too many free cards to 2 players with a bunch of live overs). Put another way, our equity realization will be substantially worse with bb coming in behind (not to mention that we will be squeezed semi frequently by bb who is facing a very wide btn open and weak sb flat (bc we are incentivized to 3b wide here)).

What’s an FL background?
I honestly am not being a smart ass and actually have no clue what that means.

I don’t get why you assume that I’m not a winning player. I am.
This isn’t as straightforward a 3! as I think you are saying.
I’m not even saying I hate 3! here.
But I sure hate 3! small to $65 and then x/muck on a board with two overs.
That’s spew.

It’s not that we should always 3! Or fold SB v button, it’s just that the BB is a tough reg who will squeeze at an optimal frequency, then flatting becomes less appealing.
Also iso the fish seems nice

Pretty certain J-4 would be in the 50-80%.

Things I think you’re overestimating:

Our 3!’s ability to take down this hand pre.
How much more difficult it is to play this hand 3 handed.
Our ability to get to showdown or make V muck his hand with only 150bb’s.
How often bb really squeezes here.
The price that bb would set in reality when he squeezes here. (Worst case scenario we fold losing 3.8 bigs. Not a big deal.)

Things I think you’re underestimating:

The ability to play this hand with better SPR 3-way or heads up.
Our ability to get to showdown without committing our stack.
Our ability to get paid off big when we do hit our sets.
How BTN lagtard V will have a harder time firing ATC against two opponents.
How a x/r on certain flops will look more convincing to BTN and bb if we’re multiway on the flop.
How profitable x/c all the way down on reasonable boards can be all the times that bb folds.

For sure, I get it.

I just don’t think it’s such a slam dunk 3! pre.

This hand has playability 3-way or heads up.

I’d rather keep SPR in check here and let BTN spew for me.

If we flat and bb 3bets that sets up a super easy spot for us.