I've been noticing a lot more in my 1/2 games larger and larger opens to the likes of $15-$25, and raises much larger with limpers in the pot. I know it's villain dependent, but I remember a poster advising me once to be more prone to 3 bet these opens. Wouldn't this be backwards? I.e. $200 effective, LAG opens LJ to $20 and we're OTB with 99, wouldn't we just want to flat and play post flop? Going off the assumption that any 3 bet commits us to call an all in, and if we 3 bet to say $70, we have over 1/3 of our stack committed, and will get a good amount of unfavorable flops.


Here are a few examples I collected from in game over the past week of play (Note: Hero has a TAG image and all are 9 handed):

1. $600 effective. Villain is a small winner, trying to adapt a TAG style, who is currently on tilt. Action is folded to villain in HJ who opens to $22, hero is in CO with K Q. This is a great spot to just flat pre, right?

2. $250 effective. Three stations limp to hero in SB who just flats J T (don't want to raise and then play a 4/5 way pot OOP and have to do a bunch of x-f.) LAG borderline maniac in BB raises to $30 and all three stations call. This is a weird situation played out. Hero?

3. $200 effective. LAG opens UTG +2 to $20 and action is folded around to hero in CO with A Q. Hero?

4. $200 effective. LAG opens UTG $25. Hero is UTG +1 with K J. Hero?

5. $300 effective. LAG, borderline raises to $25 over four limps. Hero is OTB with T 9. Hero?

I don't have time to expand, but

1. 3b mostly
2. fold
3. 3b
4. mix 3b and fold
5. snap fold

I'd look through the micro-small stakes COTW that deal with short stacks, or find short-stack strat from other sources. Like yea, it seems like you're 100bb deep, but when people are opening for 10x, you're going to end up with really low SPRs. Usually when someone opens for 10%+ of their stack the hand will go to the felt.

1st hand... KQs is an excellent hand to 3b for value vs a HJ open.

2nd hand... Strong winners usually play raise/fold sb strat, but in a 1/2 game faceing limps, I don't think your flat will be punished enough to be unprofitable, especially as you said, you're going to get a bunch of callers. I think QJs/KJs need to be raised for value though for sure. If I played it as a flat though, I'd just fold despite getting the odds. It'll be a 4 way pot with an SPR of less than 2.

3rd hand, If it's a true LAG and his UTG2 range is wider than optimal AQo could go either way, but you should def be 3b at some frequency. When someone lose and aggro opens $20 with $200 stack in my 5/5 games, I lean towards raising/gii with AQ.

4th hand... also kinda borderline. Pends on how wide you've seen him open early. In general, 3b would be nice since it gains you position, but with the short stacks relative to the open size, I'd probably play fold/raise. If V's more maniacal, then I lean to raise/gii

5th hand, probably more of a fold/call spot.

Take this with a grain of salt. These opening sizes are like what I see in my 5/5 games except eff stacks are much deeper. I tried to picture what I'd do in my games vs a shortstack with the tendencies you described. I think your strat will improve if you look into shortstack play, but I'm repeating myself. Maybe some tournament forums could help as well. See what ranges people play ~20-30bb.

1. In this specific situation, with these stack sizes, 3 bet. You have 300bb and can get the pot heads up with the tilter. Do it.

2. Definite call. You close the action and will have relative position. You are getting 4 to 1 on a call. You will win much more than that. You just have to be willing to fold to significant aggression otf.

3. Definite raise, for value and to get heads up.

4. Just fold utg1.

5. You have 4 limps and the blinds to worry about here. Just fold.

It depends on so many factors.

1. 3b (you can consider mixing in calls on the BTN)
2. Fold (like any suited connector, JTs plays a lot better IP)
3. 3b (you could mix in calls if the BTN is unlikely to enter the pot)
4. A good LAG should be pretty tight UTG and this is an easy fold. 3b if it's a bad LAG.
5. Snap fold (you aren't deep enough and there's a risk one of the EP players can backraise)

So the thing you need to be asking is simple:

A) do I make money by calling this raise? If yes, we can eliminate folding from our decision tree
B) if I 3 bet him (3x IP, 4x OOP), how often does he fold and I get to win, and what’s my equity when he does call, and does this beat my equity in calling. If yes, 3 bet

What you’ll see is against these huge sizings, pretty much every hand that is profitable as a call is more profitable as a 3 bet. Bear in mind, especially with rake; that when someone makes such a large open, our hot / cold equity basically becomes our hand v range equity vs the raise, because the blinds become trivial.

Let’s start with hand 1 as an example. I assume this is a slightly tilted TAG who will be a little too wide pre from HJ. Here’s how this scenario looks:

So we’re basically flipping. Therefore it’s probably ok to play the hand. Before rake, we’d be putting in $22 to chase $47, EV of $1.547 (around .77 bb). BTW the above is 267 combos.

Now let’s 3 bet and assume he folds all his trash offsuit and disconnected suited hands (like K9s-, Q9s) and calls the rest. So if we call his folds ATo, A9o, A8o, KJo, KTo, QJo, K9s, K8s, K7s, K6s, Q8s, that’s 12+12+12+9+9+9+3+3+3+3+3 = 75 folds, or around 28% of the time we win $26 immediately. The rest of the time we have 45.9% equity (removing the folds) investing $66 into $135.

.28 * $26 + .72 * ($135*.459 - $66) = .28 * $26 + .72 * (-4.035) = $4.3748.

So in this scenario, it’s good as a call but it’s better as a 3 bet. Hence why id not be scared of the preflop size and bump it to $66.

On to the rest:

2) I’d fold. I agree with the limp. We tried to see it cheap for $1. It didn’t work. Fold. If we are worried this guy will squeeze a ton, LRR some things like AQo or TT to trap him.

3) I think I’d three bet unless I had a read that LAG was actually fairly tight EP. Then I might just fold. I doubt you’d describe him as a LAG though if he wasn’t opening ATo or KJo from EP though.

4) fold. There’s 7 people with a say behind you so 3 betting doesn’t seem too appetizing. Nor does calling.

5) fold or 80. There’s not enough stack here


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everything but 3 is a snap fold

Thank you all so much; there are some great responses in yoga thread.

Jdr0317 - You have left me with some great ideas to think about. Is PokerCruncher worth the $12.99? I'm just wondering if it is any different from Hold 'Em Lab. Are the percentages for win and loss the same as equity percentages that Hold 'Em Lab gives for hand v. range or range v. range or hand v. hand? Lastly, I understand the EV equation, but how did you get the 28% folding of his range number, and where did you get the original $1.547 EV of calling? Thank you.

On a side note to the thread - in scenario one are we concerned about villain bluff 4 betting/shoving because of the fact that he's on tilt?

I think poker cruncher gives you breakdown of how ranges hit flops, like flopzilla ($25). If it does that, you def need to have it. It's such a small investment that'll do wonders to your game. Seeing how ranges hit flops helps you plan out how often and how much you should be c-betting.

Probably not, any equity calculator will do. I’ve had Poker Cruncher for a long time though and I do like it.

They’re just estimates and hot cold equity. I used that approximate range and calculated how KQs is doing against it for your call equity. I got the 28% number because out of his open range, I approximated that he’d fold around 28% of his hand combinations, and of the rest of his hands, you’d have roughly 45.9% equity.

I think this used to be seen as an undesired result in NL, to raise a hand that is ahead of an open range but behind a call 3 bet range, but dead money does matter.

But yeah in general, versus large sizes preflop, 3 bet or fold unless you’re way deep stacked (I guess you can exploitatively call some pocket pairs at these stacks and try to flop a set but besides that).


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Thank you.

This gets back to my question though - if we are in general 3 betting/folding vs very large opens are we afraid of getting 4 bet/jammed on light? I was orginally asking about the tilted villain, but I'm curious in general.

Depends. Take 200 stacks and dude makes it 22 and you make it 66. If he jams you’re getting about 2:1. You’d be around 32% versus AQs+, AKo, TT+, which makes for a dicey situation. But that’s already 39 of his 267 hand combos given removal, or 14.6% jam. A lot of players don’t jam nearly this wide, and the ones that do often jam much wider.

If he DOES 4 bet wider, I’d advice more folds preflop, so that you can exploit him by having him spaz into your top 6% hand range, and eventually he’ll just stuff 100 bb pre in with AJo v your AKs.


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Is this any different from Hold 'Em Lab, in which you can put in their range manually and then it'll say your equity with your hand vs. their range or your range vs. their range on boards?

I don't have hold'em lab, but it sounds just like a basic equity calculator. What I'm talking about with Flopzilla/Poker cruncher is having the ability to put in a range & a flop (then turn & river) and see how often you make a certain hands like flushes, sets, two pairs, draws, etc.. You can compare a range vs particular holdings & see how future streets improve the range. You can also link two flopzilla windows with their builtin equity calc and compare two ranges together, seeing who has an equity advantage and can quickly find the nut advantage by looking at the nutted hands. It's really powerful & cheap.

Just watch some youtube videos on it, or get the free trial version.