Read title. Recently, I've noticed that opponents tend to call my flop raises very light on wet boards. In addition, if I am OOP, they would often check behind on the turn. As a result, I think I'm losing a lot of value and letting them draw for free. So as an example,
Hero has KQs flats a raise in BB heads up. Flop KT4 with flush draw. V bets half pot do you raise?
What if the above hand was now 3 ways (let's say button flatted preflop and now flats flop)?
I think that a flop raise (although definitely not GTO) would make these hands much easier to play postflop. In addition, as a sidenote, I often see some fairly strong players in my games making these types of moves. Is this something I should consider adding to my game?

Playing OOP is much more difficult than playing in position, so this would be my first consideration (i.e. try our best not to get into these spots).

If we do end up in this situation (HU OOP), it's a choice between two sucky decisions and choosing the one that sucks less. Building a bloated pot OOP with a mediocre hand that perhaps starts getting stacks into play when we don't consider ourselves happily committed is one of the sucky choices. Potentially giving free cards to draws is the other sucky choice. Since he'll very rarely both be on a draw and hit it, and playing weakly gives him rope to hang himself when he has nothing, I typically lean towards the latter choice as being the least suckiest.

Gbutthat'smeG

First consider this example:

Villain bets KsTs4h flop with;
KJ+ K8s+ QQ JJ AT QT JT T9s T8s AQ AJ AXss 54ss+ 64ss+ Q9s J9s

He never 3bets your raise but he calls your raise with:
KJ+ FDs OESD

Against his betting range your KQs has 62% equity.
Against his bet/calling range you have 45% equity.

So though your X/R (or raise) gets more value specifically from his FDs and OESDs it value owns yourself against his AK+.

Your raise also prevents villain betting again with K9- or his gutshots so you get no more value from them.

Also what happens to your flop calling range if you're X/Ring and raising TPGK?

You need to start thinking more in terms of range vs range so that you can work out the answers to questions like the ones you ask ITT. However, such a way of thinking will also help your game in many other ways too.

Why would you raise? This seems like a perfect candidate for flat call. No real reason to raise top pair with a redraw. Maybe if you had a hand like K10s or Q9s you can check raise. Sounds like you need to protect your range more by both having good and bad hands in your flop betting and checking ranges.

raise instead of flatting. If he's a tight player opening early just fold.

Raising post flop with marginal one pair hands is just turning them into bluffs and over playing the hand.

Your goal post flop isn't to make the hand easier to play. It is to maximize the amount of money you can win. If you shoved on every flop, the hand would be easy to play, but wouldn't be profitable. If there are players doing this to make the hand easier to play, they aren't strong players.

Actually you’ve identified a basic problem but come to the slightly wrong conclusion.

The problem(s) are that flat calling is hard to do, and being oop sucks. So flat calling oop sucks hard.

The reasons for this suckage is because villain gets to fully realize his equity, and he controls the pot size.

The counter to this is to 3bet most of your continuing range pre, especially with a hand as strong as KQs, and especially if there are callers in between. When you do this, villain under realizes his equity (say, when you cbet this board and he folds 99), or he at least gets charged appropriately for wanting to continue.

So yes, you can actually checkraise a hand like KQ on KT4, for some of the reasons outlined above. But more often try to put yourself in spots where you are the pf aggressor with your continuing range.

+1

Cliffnotes...start 3 betting hands other than AA/KK

Even IP it's often better to 3bet a wider range than start calling a lot of hands against a raise. If the initial open raise is wide and villain defends poorly against 3bets you're going to make even more money 3bettig IP than OOP.

Just recognise your 3bet range depends on; the opener's initial open range, his fold-to-3bet range, his flat-3bet range, his 4bet range AND the way he plays postflop. You're looking for where and how he's unbalanced and tailoring your 3bet and flatting ranges to maximally exploit him.

Playing oop is an obvious disadvantage, so try to limit your exposure especially in tough aggressive games. Avoid building a pot with hands like ATo-/KQo- oop.

In the specific example, consider the configuration of the hand. Where did the raiser open from? What is his/her raising range from that spot? Earlier position, stronger the range. If the BTN flats, that is usually a sign of weakness, so whether HU or 3-way, KQs could easily be a 3b pre-flop. Boils down to the opening position/range.

Post-flop … in general, one pair hands should not play large pots, so raising should be held to a minimum imho. If opponent is drawing, most of the deck is in your favor, so allowing a cheap turn is not the worst thing.

I also prefer 3b or fold strategy in a HU or 3 way spot to a typical large live preflop raise sizes. The value of taking it down pre and with barrels is pretty substantial. Multiway spots and small sizings I think you can get away with some flats. KQs HU is pretty nice to 3b.

I did this exact thing in a thread I posted a few months ago and got flamed pretty hard on the forum. I'm still not sure how good or bad this is. Playing oop is just not pretty either way, you either get in trouble against the continuing range or play too passively and allow your hand to look face up. As counter intuitive as this sounds I think it might be more profitable to "turn KQ into a bluff" and just take it down a lot with card removal and sometimes behind ahead at showdown.

I like the strategy of working in more c/r bluffs and then balancing a bit with some thinner value like KQ. It's kind of a value bluff. If you read hands on this forum whenever OP gets c/r 9 out of 10 posters say "I sigh fold and believe what he's repping." Just c/r the hell out of regs and profit??

^ not necessarily - 2+2ers' advice to fold a lot is because in most of our games a lot of our opponents are unbalanced with too much value when they bet or raise. That doesn't mean that the majority of our opponents are folding too tightly. Quite the opposite - they're loose and passive. That means they call too wide and bet too narrow. We exploit them by bet/folding NOT by check/raising.

Only specific known overfolders should be targeted for excessive check/raising and they, almost by definition, have to be betting somewhat excessively in the first place.

This is why I want to c/r these grindey tags, they think a flop c/r is very value heavy. 9 out of 10 posts here are "sigh fold to the aggression"

This is obv the exact opposite of the 2+2er, and I don't suggest running a ton of bluffs against them if they only cbet for value. But some loose passive players are good to bluff in position.

Dont just "want" to do it. Start doing it. Then post those hands here and as everyone says you are a monkey, you can smile as your win rate sky rockets.

Then we can sit back and laugh together.

I'm not arguing with check/raising people who'll fold a lot to check raises. I just don't know why you'd want to use TP2K to do it with in the first instance. If they're over folding you don't need to balance - just bluff X/R a lot and adjust if they catch on and start calling you.

That preserves your actual hands for calling them down. Thereby you continue more frequently against them and win more $$$ from them.

Also although 2+2ers advise folding a lot vs the general loose passive population we're not advising folding a lot vs players who are very aggressive. Quite the opposite. The general advice against overly aggressive players is to get sticky.

You aren't going to look like a loose-passive player so no thinking grinder is going to assume your X/R range is super strong and you'll get called down. I guess once you establish that dynamic then you can start X/Ring a wide linear range and profit while they keep calling you down light. Point is it's a second adjustment in my view, not your first port of call with TP2K.

There are pros and cons to any decision we make oop, and I'm not saying one play is clearly better than others. We might use a mix of c/c and c/r with KQ. To be fair I am not even happy we are in this spot in the first place since this specific hand and spot played much better as a 3b preflop. But benefits are to balance our c/r bluffs, deny him the chance to realize his equity (which he often does when we take the c/c check turn line), and occasionally get big value from some hands like KJ, QJ.

Calling down is a sucky option imo. When we do get barreled we are probably not good since that's not a line V takes with worse for value. Are we really going to call 3 streets with KQ against anyone? If you post that hand on 2+2 9 out of 10 would again say fold. "We block QJ, this is always a better hand for value, etc etc" That's the advice given every time, even if it's a lag. Think about when we call down, V can basically put us on exactly what we have.

When we c/c out of position against barrelers, we will definitely look passive (maybe not loose but definitely passive). Being passive seems to be what you're advocating, getting sticky with pairs against thinking grinders who barrel. The problem is the grinder gets to decide what hands he wants to do that, and gets to realize equity when he doesn't want to barrel. By c/r we limit their ability to realize equity and barrel us as the board worsens. There are downsides like we get owned by AK, KT type stuff sometimes but c/c down and giving him the keys to the castle with more cards to come and a face up hand isn't something I want to do every time.

I check call down with weaker hands than this against known aggressive players capable of barreling often and light. It has been quite profitable for me.

We don't always have to X/C whole way to river. We can sometimes lead the turn or X/F turn or lead the river or X/F the river.

We don't always have precisely this hand when we start X/calling. Sometimes we have draws, OOP floats, sets etc. That way villain can't just barrel all scare cards to flopped top pair because we frequently hit those scare cards or have redraws or just don't believe him because he's so aggro. Point is we're choosing to X/C a range vs a particular player because we think this overall strategy us the most profitable.

You seem fixated on not X/Calling and that seems to stem from uncertainty. Fine. You have no reads so you're very uncertain, especially OOP. Just use a linear value 3bet only defence from the blinds (and IP TBH) and never limp/call.

However, my understanding is that the latest expert thinking is that blinds can profitably use a relatively wide flatting defence range against small sized steal raises (from BTN CO and sometimes HJ). I think it's worth becoming comfortable with these uncomfortable spots so that you have more strategic options when in blinds vs steal position spots.

Key is you don't have to defend nearly as often if they're opening from EP or if they're opening really big (4X+) from steal positions. We're talking about positionally aware players with wide stealing ranges sized at <= 4X and we're mostly taking about us being in the big blind.

Finally it doesn't sound like you've understood what I was saying about multiple adjustments so I'll lay them out for you:

1) no reads - play tight and balanced IP as much as possible and usually 3bet rather than flat. Your image develops as TAG/nitty.

2) you get a read V1 is aggressive, barrels wide post flop is aware of your style, has capacity to fold and is stealing wide with modest sizings. You start flatting some hands from the blinds (mainly big blind) vs V1's steals and you X/R a lot of draws and air while calling down with medium strength and high strength hands postflop. Your X/R bluffs pick up V1's open and flop cbet (>value than just folding him preflop with a 3bet). Your call downs net you more profit still.

3) V1 sees what you're doing after a while and adjusts by getting stickier vs your X/R and stealing and barreling less.

4) you're already prepared for his adjustment with your own counter adjustment: X/R a linear value range and float him more OOP. Ideally you try to get your adjustment in ahead of his. You do this by noticing him stealing less, altering his steal sizing or decreasing his cbet frequency. Also you can premptively adjust as soon as you show down a X/R bluff (or muck such that it's obvious you were bluffing) or a particularly strong hand that you've X/C with.

If V1 ceases adjusting you stick with whatever exploitative strategy is working. If he keeps adjusting then so do you and you'll both gradually end up playing balanced ranges against each other in a reg-war that's unprofitable for both of you (because rake) and you're best off avoiding each other.

Another thought: if a loose and aggressive dynamic develops between you and a thinking villain you will find yourself in a situation where your definition of a cooler necessarily has to expand.

E.g. if he's barreling wide across all three streets then AK Vs KQ or KT for 2pair Vs your AK/KQ for top pair may well become effectively coolers. You don't, in those circumstances, need to worry about it in the same way as you wouldn't if you GII set over set or 2nd nut flush Vs nut-flush vs a more passive player.

^ you're right x/c with a range on the flop was pretty far over my head thanks for the explanation.

I'm trying to provide an alternative thought process that's more proactive and aggressive than the standard lines. The same sorts of adjustments can be made in reverse if we start out ripping pots and making V uncomfortable. V will adjust to it and we can adjust to that, just as you've written.

^ exactly. You don't have to start tight. A lot of really strong players will start out way loose and over the top aggro when they first sit down. It enables them to more rapidly identify the foldy players than the "tight-first" approach. Also they're tiltless and very aware of everyone at the table so they don't lose as much by spewing chips to the sticky fish as I would if I were to go in loose and aggro from the first hand.