i see alot of people defaulting to betting 1/4-1/3 pot when HU in a 3b pot with initiative.

e.g. , 3b AKo, flop comes disconnected rags, you cbet 1/4-1/3 pot

or 3b JJ, flop comes Q-rag-rag, you cbet 1/4-1/3 pot.


what is the point of this?

ive been doing this for awhile and this line often leads to weird situations where I either raised light (when they think im weak) or floated and then im not sure what to do on the turn.

why wouldn't you just check back 100% with your bluffcatching hands, or cbet bigger with whiffed AK to get folds?

My guess is that a small bet gives us the cheapest attempt at taking it down right now, especially if the idea is that we're also doing this with the ~nuts too, especially if opponents are inelastic to sizing (as there may actually be very little difference in what they are calling a 1/4 thru 3/4 PSB with).

GcluelessbetsizingnoobG

There are certain flop textures to range bet on in a 3bet pot. Obviously not all flops. As far as sizing goes, sticking to the same sizing removes complexity even if there are some spots where theory might suggest to bet larger. Position matters, too.

can you explain this in more detail

for example in my example above, on a flop like 852 rainbow, im guessing the play is to range bet almost always with whatever your hand is, in position or otherwise. this bet gets called in my experience about 90% of the time. what is the purpose of the bet?

My guess is that you're making a couple of mistakes.

You probably aren't differentiating enough boards and knowing which hands to bet vs check.

Like in your example Q X X;
AK is actually checking like half the time and you're only betting about half the time overall.

There are a lot of boards where you would assume it's a range bet where in fact proper baseline is actually to check half your range or more.
8 7 6r is one I can think of that is actually a range check where less studied players I'm sure probably think this is a range bet.

The second thing is that not everything is 1/3 sizing. There are some boards where 40-50% is better vs others where 25-33% are better.

Maybe another thing is sample size and cognitive bias. You are remembering all the times you got raised and maybe they just happened to have a strong hand that time and you think they are just raising you because they perceive your bet as weak.

A lot of players especially at lower limits actually don't do this in practice and if you actually have a good range construction it's not that difficult to play against and adjust.

The boards where you are range betting the size is small as that's a function of how bet size and bet frequency generally interact. When one goes up the other goes down. And they are on boards where ranges are such that you have an advantage and the villain can't just raise willy nilly.

Case in point you should actually be checking this quite often. But it will vary depending on your position and villains because both of your ranges are what determine the bet frequencies and sizings.

This just requires a lot of study away from the tables and you can start to see some patterns in which turns are good/bad for you on which boards IP and OOP.

Then you see how things change when villain's pf range and flop calling ranges change. A lot of villains are too wide pf and too wide on the flop so double barreling a lot of spots becomes a deviation to baseline where you are often checking.

You aren't always supposed to cbet small. It depends on the board and positions. But the fact of the matter is that often when you 3bet, you do cbet a lot, and that sizing is most common 20% pot to 33% pot, with a fair amount of 50% pot, and a little bit of bigger sizing. Some boards we will check more than others.

Why do we often bet? Because we have a lot of good hands that want to bet. We always have hands like overpairs, and frequently have hands like TPTK, TPGK, top set, etc. When we have a really strong range advantage, we can bet our whole range, usually for a small amount. Our value portion of our range is so strong that it protects our entire range which bets. This hits a sweet spot where our weak hands get to bluff cheaply and our opponent is forced to call down light or face being exploited. Also, sometimes we have hands like JJ on a Q high board that benefit from protection and can get called by worse when we bet small.

We have a strong hand enough of the time that our opponent would be spewing to float or check raise with any two cards.

Another nice benefit to betting small is getting to realize our equity cheaply when in position.

On certain boards we don't have enough value hands to bet range, or our range is more polar so we want to bet more with strong hands/draws/trash and check more with our worst trash with no equity or blocker effects/marginal made hands/some traps. We typically bet larger when we do bet these boards, although occasionally we might small bet or check when the boards are connected and our opponent has a lot of nuts in their range.

Either way, you have to balance. If your checking range doesn't have enough strong hands on different run outs, then we can be exploited by aggression.

Understand that we tend to bet a lot on earlier streets and check a lot on later streets. Some hands want to take a free card or get to showdown. Other hands just give up because we can't fight for every single pot. A lot of the time, we are just going to cbet the flop with whiffed AK, check turn, and lose. That doesn't mean we played the hand wrong.

It's a good question. I don't ever see people fold to that. It bloats the pot. I think the only justification for it is that it doesn't expose your hand as AKo. It does bloat the pot though without folding anyone else out.

The point is to Keep It Simple, Stupid.

A bet-small-with-range strategy gives up surprisingly little EV compared to a full equilibrium strategy, and it is light-years easier for real people to implement in the heat of battle than anything resembling a full equilibrium strategy.

Moreover, it is pretty well-documented that the player pool overfolds to these small bets, and so they are significantly profitable.

As for when some chowderhead mistakes the small c-bet for "weakness" and throws a raise in, well, we like it when people make big mistakes in big pots.

My experience has been the exact opposite. I almost never see folds to smaller cbets and even tonight I had someone float me with KJo on a 855r board when I 1/3 pot it. Ive wondered the same thing as OP because the flop is where the majority of calling mistakes come from so why would we not bet more on average to take advantage of this?

Ive limited small cbets to HU dry boards in position vs good opponents. Against the average 2/5 player I am betting at least 50% pot cbet depending on board texture.

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