So I've got a bit of a situation. I'm a young TAG grinder. He's a young LAG grinder. I don't think he's good as he spews A LOT.

Our history. We've played a good deal together. He knows and sees me as a generally tight player but still wants to mess with me in position. It's just too tempting for him.

The situation more specifically. This guy steals button with ATC. Of course I won't accept that when I'm in the blinds. So I started 3betting him with an expanded value range like AJ+, KQo+, 99+ and threw in some light 3bs now and then. The guy responded by often flatting my 3bs, hoping to either hit the flop or somehow outplay me in position. He's lost most of those confrontations postflop (and they were big pots) but still insisted on stealing ATC. At which I have expanded my value 3bet range further to about 15% against him to include hands as weak QTs, K9s and 77+.

At this point I started wondering when he'll start responding to my 3betting by 4bing rather than flatting. It took a couple hours.

Here's what happened. $1600 eff.

1. V steals OTB and makes it $30. Loose passive fish in SB calls (as he often calls raises in the blinds). I make it $120 with JTs in BB. V makes it $440. I fold. V shows a "3".

2. 15 mins later. V steals OTB and makes it $30. LP fish in SB of course calls. I make it $120 with 99. V makes it $440. Fish frustratingly exclaims "why am put in this position again?" as he folds. I fold. V says.. "of course I wouldn't bluff again" and shows a "4".

So V basically finally realized I'm 3betting his ATC opens quite wide and is now 4b bluffing me (and showing). And although I foresaw this as the next step in the escalation, when it happened I don't know how to respond.

Do we just start 5b shoving an extended value range? Or is that a mistake he's trying to have us make? Stacks don't allow for 5b bluffing and calling doesn't make any sense. Or do we cut back on our 15% extended 3b range and throw some of that range back into flatting? I prefer 3bing him to flatting as that dulls his positional advantage somewhat. When we flat we're don't "regain" initiative. So if he forces us to 3b less and flat more - to me that's a win for him.

This guy is a hardcore reg as am I so this is not going away. Basically the war just escalated to a new level and I need to excel at the next stage.

Why did you fold 99? Pretty much the nuts. If you don't want to get it in light then stop 3b him light from blinds obviously...and seat change

Hand 1: Don't 3bet, just call.

Hand 2: Don't 3bet, just call.

3betting JTs and 99 in these spots is just so, so bad.

another line to take occasionally - flat pre, check/shove flops with any equity at all.

There's no way he should be allowed to profitably open ATC. 50% of all hands, sure but not all.

I'd 3-bet with around the top 20-25% of hands (A2s+, A6o+, any pair, any two broadway, 56s+). And flat pretty wide too.

Now here's the part that should help you most:

If he 4-bets your $120 to $440, flat or 5bet at least 30% of the time. If you're 3-betting 25% of the time, that's the top 7.5% of all hands. Pocket 9s should fall within the top 7.5% (though its close), so you should have flatted or 5betted.

If he 4-bets your $90 open to $270, flat or 5bet at least ~35% of the time.

After 3-betting, if you will fold around 30%+ of the time, then he can profitably 4-bet with ATC.

It's not true that you should only 3-bet with hands that you are willing to call 4-bets with. We can still fold to 4-bets after 3-betting most of the time without being exploited.

If we somehow know villain is 4-betting with ATC, we can increase the % that we flat or 5-bet against his 4-bet much higher.

Flatting is worse unless you have a plan postflop.

No it's not. There's no need to bloat a pot OOP in either example. Flat and c/r flops with equity, 3 bet only tip top of your range pre seeing as how V is coming over the top.

You fold your BB 85% of the time and you don't understand why he is raising ATC?

And as other said, if you don't like being in these spots, then it's a pretty simple adjustment: just call the original raise. Let him 4-bet bluff his J4s into your QQ, not your 99.

Good luck with this strat

If villain is really 4b this wide you either need to start 5b him or flatting him some. You can mix in some flats of his opens with premiums if he continues to spew post flop. But I would prefer to allow him to make large 4b mistakes pre by 3b him with a balanced range. But you have to be prepared to 5b some part of your range or he is simply going to print $$$ from you.

And as others have said 3b folding 99 vs this player is tragic

For the love of god, don't 3b JTs. It is plennnnnnnnnty good enough to flat.

And please for the love of god, don't 3b 99 if you plan on folding to a 4b!!!!!!! 99 is a clear clear clear value 3b/GII hand with this dynamic 100bbs deep. Obviously 160bbs deep things get a little stickier, but you certainly don't want to expand your 3b/f'ing range to include a hand in the top 8% of your range (so in other words, if you plan to fold it to a 4b, then you should just flat it).

Actually, given sizing, this isn't actually stickier 160bbs deep. He's 4b'ing such a huge amount that the maths work out very similar to 100bbs deep. BenT provides some good high-level maths and approaches, and from there, we could nitpick all day about how exactly to form our ranges.

If you care to learn more about the actual process behind getting all these numbers and pretty in-depth material on how you should approach forming your ranges, here is a very famous article: http://en.donkr.com/forum/optimal-3-...-part-1-533561. It'll take some homework to wade through all of it and get to the point where you can really apply it at the tables, but that's why this post started with a couple of "For love of god statements" and a lot of exclamation points: if you want to play well in these spots, it's gonna take some work.

Take a step back and focus on the fundamental principles at play here.

Why do we raise? There are many reasons to raise but basic reasons are to inflate the pot when we have an equity advantage because based on villain tendencies we believe our villain will call with a lessor hand (or fold a better hand--- though that doesn't apply to this villain).

The problem I see in this thread is that we have been conditioned to "only" 3-bet with a certain range of hands and to "only" 4-bet with a certain range of hands.

This is right 98% of the time, but not vs this villain.

Villain is what I refer to as an "Awesome Possum". It's a new poker term I've come up with. Awesome possums are LAG ego maniacs or sometimes the disease is temporary, they run the table a little bit, feel bullet proof, and get in that "i'm going to outplay you no matter what" mode of poker. Once a player has turned into an Awesome Possum, they are just never folding or ever giving up on a hand no matter what.

So, we have a player description LAG + Ego Maniac. We have a range: ATC.

So, lets apply some principles of poker to this situation.

If we had AK how many of you would advocate being comfortable with 5-betting a villain with a ATC range and getting it all of if he jammed us. I would imagine most of you would be.

So we have no problems in this scenario, that is 5-betting his ATC range and getting it in right?

How about doing it with 99?

As you can see, 99 is a better hand than AK against this villain.

now, I can already hear the excuse, "But dgi, what if he 6-bet ships us, what if he only calls our 5-bet with JJ+...."

That is being scared poker. Instead of worrying about the what ifs, lets make our decisions based on the observable data and the facts.

Fact is, this villain has demonstrated an insanely wide opening range from the button and has now demonstrated that he has adjusted to our light 3-bets by 4-betting us with a wide range that at best consists of 33+. Hero and villain have history and villain has shown himself to be an awesome possum.

Against this type of villain, 99 is pure freaking +EV gold, and we should have a massive pulsating boner to 5-bet this guy and "hope" that he 6-bet shoves us so we can snap call him with 99.

Poker is all about adjusting to your opponents and your situation. Granted, this situation is very rare, but these are the situations in which we can print money if we truly understand the fundamental concepts and principles of poker.

This is a high variance +EV spot. Having 99 vs this villain is equivalent to having KK vs a typical aggro donk. Would we ever be scared to get it all-in with KK vs an aggro donk?

These types of players are used to using their hyper aggression to fold out players because most ABC players just don't want to play for 150bb without the near nuts or a top 2% range. So players like this count on that and they pound-pound-pound the pot mercilessly because they know ABC players are "gonna wait for a better spot" 98% of the time.

In this case, Hero is in a leveling war with an Awesome Possum.

Sometimes, when it is thinking player vs thinking player you are going to be in spots that would otherwise be considered marginal but in reality you are way ahead if you are willing to lift up your skirt, grab your balls, and go to war.

Against Awesome Possums like this, our plan should be to 5-bet and then no matter how scary the board is, we jam flop.

Basically, this situation is rare, maybe happens 1% of the time,

"Cry Havoc and Let Loose the Dogs of War"

Awsome post DGI, pure ****ing gold.

Epic DGI wisdom ITT.

disagree with a few points:

i think JTs is a perfectly fine 3b, despite clearly being good enough to call. while taking hands from near/right below the bottom of our defending range is one way to choose which hands we 3b, it is not the only way. we have to keep in mind that our ideal approach would be to compare ev(flat) to ev(3b) (to fold) of all our hands and choose the higher one. taking these bottom hands imperfectly approximates this because we are improving the ev of the hands we select, but it does not speak to whether or not some hand firmly within our calling range (ie) JTs is more profitable to 3b or call with. from a more general theory perspective, i think you can make an argument that choosing hands like JTs will outperform choosing hands at the bottom of our range, because (up to this point) V has adjusted (as many do) by flatting our 3b frequently from the button, which would suggest that we would prefer to have a more linearly constructed range than a polar one.

as for the argument that you should not 3b 99 if you plan to fold it to a 4b, i think that it is true in some instances but not others (although this may be one of those instances). our ev of 3b comes from some combination of him folding, calling, and raising, and it is perfectly reasonable to 3b because you think the calling portion is very big and the raising portion only slightly negative.

also, @dgi: using a 4b range for V of ATC is rather absurd, and using any reasonable approximation (which includes him being unreasonable, up to a point) of his 4b range, AKs will outperform 99 by a good margin. further, the fact V showed a 3 should not lead us to the conclusion that he 4b with 33+(or 33 at all, for that matter). after 3b oop, most people respond to 4b by either folding or raising; this should suggest to us that if he knows much/anything, he is 4b a polarized range, and then the more plausible conclusion after seeing a 3 is that he was 4b A3/K3

If villain's raising frequency was around 18% I could agree that he is likely polarized as this would indicate that V is balancing and properly assigning a range of strong hands and a range of weak hands and utilizing blockers, yada yada yada. But based on the OP, I'm lead to believe that V has a frequency that is closer to something like 80%+

Thus, he is NOT polarized. When I said, "At best 33+" I was being extremely generous as I was giving V the benefit of at least 4-betting us with a pair. But truth be told, I firmly believe that this sort of villain was 4-betting us with basically ATC. I believe based on the OP and his "show" of the 3 and the 4 is indicative that he has adjusted to our adjustment and is in what I called Awesome Possum mode. We 3-bet him light, he responded by 4-betting us back two times and showing us a 3 and a 4.

For the sake of argument, if we say he had A3 and A4 then what is the 4-betting range you assign him? How balanced do you think he is with his polarization in terms of overall range. Are you saying that 80% of the time he has JJ+, AK and that 20% of the time he has A-rag and K-rag, and airballs to use as blockers and to balance?

Based on the OP I think something like the above is just unlikely in the extreme. His frequency and his aggression factor is just way too high for us to worry about him being polarized with anything resembling proper balancing. So, with that, I'm fine assigning him an awesome possum range of ATC until he proves otherwise. The way I see this, he has adjusted to our adjustment thus we need to readjust and that means blasting him with 99 in this spot. Then, after we blast him with 99 a few times and sense that he is no longer 4-betting us light THEN we can adjust to that adjustment. But not before we blast him a few times with 99. Don't prematurely adjust to an adjustment that hasn't happened yet (if that makes any sense ).

Lastly, I completely disagree with AK being a better hand than 99 vs this villain type. I believe villains like this will level themselves that we have AK, AQ and then overvalue any pair thinking they are flipping vs AK/AQ. IN fact, this type of villain would be more likely to fold AT, KT hands against us believing we have AK/AQ so our 99 will fold out hands that have decent equity against us yet get called by 22-88 because villain thinks he's flipping vs our AK/AQ.

well there are plenty of numbers inbetween 18-80, and i said that it was a stronger inference that he was polarized when we saw the 3 than that he 4b 33+. this does not mean that i think his range is balanced or well constructed, simply that he flats a good deal of medium strength hands to our 3b (22-88 fall into this category). its a pretty drastic conclusion/assertion that V has a 4b freq of 80% based on the information provided in the OP. we are given a reference to several times OP 3b and was flatted, and then the most recent instance when he 4b and showed a 3 (at the point in which the 99 decision occurs). without even just saying lolsamplesize, you can make the argument that the information provided indicates that he flats 3b pretty frequently, and 4b a low %. you are playing against a range of strats, most of which are not 4b 100%.

all that being said, i would still jam 99 (but i would rather have AKs)

I mean sure lolsample size but OP describes him LAG bordering on spazz. He open BTN 100%, gets 3b a bit and then 4b with a 3...all indications are that his response to 3b is to widen his 4b range. He really hasn't presented a spot where he is flatting 3b wide or at all really so I think you are imposing your thought processes on villain.

I was going to write up a response similar to DGI but he beat me to it and my response wouldn't have been as good. Basically anyone wanting to remove 4b with "marginal" absolute pre-flop hands isn't really playing poker at all.

And not sure why we would want a seat change from this guy if he is agood LAG. 2 to our right is fine.

I was being purposefully hyperbolic with the "for the love of god" stuff, and I took much more issue with the thought process (3b'ing is more pro than flatting, my hand is good enough let's 3b it, **** he 4b, what now?).

[quibbling stuff that's much less important than everything else in our discussion] That being said: I realize the game has moved toward playing only so much out of the blinds as keeps you from being exploited because simply not getting exploited is good enough when you're OOP against good regs, which you can very well accomplish just by 3b'ing a linear range, flatting a few playable hands, and folding everything else, BUT. Playing against a LAG whose range is ATC is exploitable. We're not just trying to tread water here. Let's try and play as many hands as we can sustain in this spot.

JTs/Axs/etc is gonna make some good money off of villain in this spot so long as we're intelligent about forming c/r ranges and such, and when we do that, we can fill our 3b/f hands with hands we otherwise would have to fold. You may play it differently, and I can't say with certitude that the way you play your range overall won't win as much as my way, but I did want to defend my thought process. [/quibbling stuff that's much less important than everything else in our discussion]

Also, hero's approach to this hand is doing nothing but expanding our 3b/f range in a spot where villain has already shown that he can bluff (and we already should have assumed that he would have at some point). I was trying to get across the point that we're better off looking at how we're shoving/calling shoves, and working our way backwards from there (or at the very least, something additional can be gained from that perspective to add to the more natural one of playing the bet that's right ahead of you), then we are to just auto-3b hands that are "good enough" and find ourselves realizing that we don't feel like playing it for stacks when we're 4b.

@dgi: You might be able to get in villain's head and know how he's going to play his hands even before he does, and that's great. I think unless you're the GOAT rock-paper-scissors player, though, you're not really gonna be able to play the leveling war in a way that's vastly better than just doing what's good against this opponent most the time.

Of course we have our certain reads on villain, and we should leverage those to the max, and we can also pick up on some gameflow dynamics and reads to further leverage, but you're going really far down the road on your assumptions on how he is going to play the very next hand. Clearly he doesn't 4b 80% overall, because he's already flatted several 3bs before these two hands, so we're just assuming that now that he's in 4b mode, he's simply in that mode for a long time? Maybe you're right; maybe you're wrong. I just think it's better to have a plan that works pretty much regardless of how villain adjusts, within certain *general* parameters and assumptions that we have on villain.

It also seems like you're setting up a dichotomy between villain playing with balance and villain 4b'ing ATC, which is an extremely false one.

OP says that villain flatted hero's 3bs for a while before these two hands occurred.

Hahaha, love it! I can't wait to play this guy again. He's actually always good for the game even though he's thinks he's "Awesome Possum". BTW, I've never met a good LAG.. ever. Every LAG I've ever encountered spews way too hard to be considered good. And I've played $1/$2 thru $5/$10. Has anyone?

Yeah ninja edit...my bad

Though if OP's 3b frequency has increased in this session I would argue that he is likely to ramp up the agression a bit here. But yeah I stand corrected on that.

Yes, but those are extremely rare, so i have the same experience as you when it comes to good LAGs.

I played with one very very good LAG pretty regurarly couple of years ago in an undergroundclub in Oslo, but he is pretty much one of the best low limit cashplayers in the country also. If deepstacked he is a ****ing hell to face, especially OOP. It was not uncommon for him to build insane stacks in the game, like 3000 BB and pretty much clean up the table through the night.

Zero good LAGs at LA 5/10 NL.

Are you advocating a polarized 3b range vs this V as opposed to my approach of an "extended value" "linear" 3b range; and flatting "good hands" and extracting value postflop?