Ok. This has gone from a weird quirk to a definite trend. Players at my primary room just never 3bet. I just felted two players in the same hand when I raised preflop with AQ and the flop came QQ9. They had AA and KK.

So the question I'm pondering is how to exploit villains who never 3bet. Here's what I presently do.

1. Raise low pocket pairs from early position.
2. Reduce my Cbet%
3. Raise more aces with mediocre kickers.
4. 3bet a little bit wider, and Cbet 100% of flops when I do, because my perceived range is QQ+.

Any other ideas?

What is your reason for doing those 4 things? The reason is more important than the action itself

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1. Raise pocket pairs from early position because I don't have to worry about getting 3bet and having to fold.
2. But if I don't hit a set I rarely Cbet, because there are more overpairs in villains' ranges.
3. I play aces with mediocre kickers because it becomes a lot more likely that I will be good when I flop an ace.
4. When I 3bet, my perceived range is a lot stronger than my actual range. My opponents seem to not be able to imagine I could have worse than QQ. So i can Cbet 100% of flops. If they call my cbet I figure I'm up against two pair or better and shut down.

They have a bunch of better aces in their range. **** aces are still ****. If they're flatting KK they're also flatting AT-AQ.

I mean, I don't go broke with a single pair of aces with a mediocre kicker. And when I say mediocre kicker I include jacks and tens. I'm not playing A7 or A6 or anything like that.

Exploit them by flopping trips when both of them don't fold a pair. Easy.

I think the most profitable adjustment at a table where you virtually never get 3bet is to place a higher value on hands that play well multiway. I usually wouldn't open small suited connectors from UTG/UTG+1, but if I knew that I could raise 45s or 67s from EP and not have to worry about getting 3 bet I would be happy to see a flop. Same is true for all pairs, as you mentioned.

The other part of this is that since you'll be playing against stronger hands more frequently than you normally would be in single raised pots you have better implied odds (the hand you referenced where AQ beat KK and AA is evidence of this).

I think mediocre aces generally have less value in these spots because you are more likely to be flatted by dominating hands.

This is good. Also you can limp in more too since raising ranges are pretty much JJ+ AK. Can steal many limped pots with semi bluffs and stabbing at orphan pots.

#1 - Agree 100%. I'd also open with virtually any suited connectors or one-gappers.

#2- Yes but I'd be careful giving too much credit. I'd maybe alter your phrasing to read "reduce double barrel %."

#3 - I would actually reduce raising Aces with mediocre kicker as you are often running into AK/AQ and if an A flops vs KK/QQ/JJ you likely aren't getting paid off very often. You are trapping yourself in these spots many times.

#4 - I don't understand the logic here. If you are altering your strategy due to players flatting AA/KK/QQ why would you be bloating the pot and cbetting 100% of the flops when they are super strong?


I'd also be calling in position to many raises with any pocket pair, suited connectors as well as one and two-gappers, and any Ace suited. If they are going to let you see multi-way flops cheap in position you have disguised hands to get their entire stack.

Because they never 3bet and rarely see anyone else 3bet, they assume that anyone who does has to be super strong. You know how the old wisdom used to be that the 4th bet always meant AA? Well, in their minds, the 3rd bet is the new 4th bet.

I remember one hand someone raised from the button and I 3bet from the BB with AQo. He called. The flop came three low cards. I Cbet and the guy showed me JJ and folded. He was set-mining Jacks in position!

So what I'm saying is that when they just flat my 3bet, I can feel safe to Cbet any flop regardless of texture because they put me on such a strong range. If they call my 3bet I know I'm beat and just shut down, but they will call my 3bet so infrequently that it doesn't matter what I have, it's a +EV play. As long as I don't do it more than twice or so during a single session.

"What would you do if V has a very strong range and don't fold?"

1. Unless the idea is to "block raise," basically to set a lower price than what V might raise, then how would V never 3betting makes opening in EP better?

Optimally, it is best to minimize all set mining cost while maximizing profit.

2. Idea of cbetting is to target V's entire calling range. Him merging his 3betting range still has very little effect to his flop calling range.

3. Makes no sense. Repping a scare card and actually holding the scare card are two different things. If V has JJ+ in his range, A-high board will be difficult for him to continue 75% of the times.

4. Has more to do with post-flop tendencies than whether he has a 3betting range pre.

Grunch*

You can open slightly wider than normal since you'll get to see cheap flops more often.

Postflop, when thinking about opponents' ranges, you can't assume they are capped. example: Against a normal opponent if they just flat your open, you can mostly exclude QQ-AA from their range on a flop of 2 2 2. So the range they see the flop with is wider than normal but not necessarily stronger, since if they did 3-bet pre we could normally exclude both QQ+ and the hands barely too weak to flat from their flat-pre range.

I don't think not V's not 3b-ing is exactly the keys to the kingdom. 3b isn't all that common in live games anyway, so reducing the frequency to 0 doesn't necessarily mean that much. If 3bs are common, it indicates V's are 3b light, which carries its own set of adjustments.

Mostly, a lack of 3b means you can't eliminate the strongest hands from your opponents range when they call your raise. That's actually not entirely helpful.

It gives you a little more liberty to vary the size your raises, since a small raise won't be reraised. Of course, you'll need to ensure that either opponents won't catch a sizing tell or that you use sufficient deception that it's not reliable.

I don't think a lack of 3b really gives you license to raise a significantly wider range of hands. The problem with raising weak hands isn't mostly that they'll get reraised. It's that they'll often hit the flop weakly and be unsure where they stand.

I think you have a little more license to raise somewhat wider on the button in order to take control of the hand, better define ranges against you (but see above), possibly take the pot, and provide some deception. You'll always either win or get to see a flop, which helps the EV. But if 3b isn't common to start with, this isn't that significant.

I'd actually raise even tighter in EP. Something like AQo benefits from getting 3b by premium hands, as it can then get away from dominated situations. If V's are flatting with everything, you have much less information post and are more likely to be dominated.

I think it makes l/rr somewhat more attractive. Since your premiums will never be 3b (allowing you to 4b) it might be better to l/rr to get more money in pre. Stack sizes matter a lot here.

Mostly I'd play my normal game. The lack of 3b will contribute somewhat to my EV, but I don't think it's something that benefits from significant adjustments. Just keep it in mind post when you're conducting hand ranges.

This.

Also: Remember OOP preflop there are more than 1-2 players on the table to deal with. Don't evolve some pre flop strategy to deal with a non-3 better but then get picked off from some other player.

Overall I wouldn't change strategy much at all, just look for spots HU where you flop 2 pair or better and bet big knowing they can be calling with an overpair.

So basically focus on your postflop strategy while playing hands cheaply pre flop that can flop big

[QUOTE=

1. Raise low pocket pairs from early position.
2. Reduce my Cbet%
3. Raise more aces with mediocre kickers.
4. 3bet a little bit wider, and Cbet 100% of flops when I do, because my perceived range is QQ+.

Any other ideas?[/QUOTE]

1. You want to see sets cheap and get better odds. Since I doubt that you have 9V who are not ever 3 betting the few who are will pick up on this and start robbing you.
2. I can see this but got to rep the scare cards Also combined with #1 this will make you more explotabule. Heck I would stop 3 betting you if I think you are doing 1 and 2.
3. Do this only if you don't like money
4. uh? Don't bef ooled into thinking that the range you put them on is the same range they put you on.

I would say this does open up your calling range with drawing hands to a better knowing there is a low chance of being reraised behind you.

I've played against the V you've described before, and the proper adjustments are highly dependent upon their post-flop play.

Here are some of the main divisions of this sort of player:

Preflop:
-Plays super tight pre-flop, such that even a call represents a narrow and strong range
-Plays extremely loose pre-flop, such that their pre-flop calling range is almost the entire deck

Post-flop:
-Plays over-pairs passively post-flop as well, check-calling all streets on most boards
-Will donk-bet with over-pairs when OOP, becoming more cautious when raised, at which point they tend to call down
-Will donk-bet with over-pairs when OOP, and 3B-GII when raised, as they think over-pairs are the nuts
-Will raise/check-raise over-pairs on relatively safe boards (e.g. KK on J73dd), typically not folding as they think over-pairs are the nuts.
-Will significantly over-play over-pairs in most spots, the main example I can think of this was a cold C/R 3-bet on a 567ddx flop with AA in a multi-way pot for a gazillion BBs; the OP's example is also emblematic of this with the paired board.
-There are probably others I've over-looked, but these are the main ones.

All of these different types of PF non-3bettors call for significantly different adjustments in both our pre-flop and post-flop ranges. I don't have time to list them at the moment, but I'm sure that there are many skilled posters on here who can help with that.

If someone was never ever going to reraise me, and I knew that for a fact as they have some kind of "system" of just always limping and calling my raises to stay "balanced" in their view, then I would just constantly be raising all connectors, pocket pairs, suited hands that have showdown value, etc etc etc. I mean there's just no threat to you playing LAG at all, so you get to build pots with speculative hands all you like, and they are the one's who will have no idea what you ever have.