This post is not a hand history but a strategy question. Assume it’s 1/2 eight-handed, stacks 300 effective. Your average loose passive V opens to 10 in UTG2. LJ folds. Hero is in the HJ. What
should be the bottom of the hero’s 3bet range?

Right now the bottom of my 3bet range here is 88, KQo, and JTs. Too tight? Too laggy?

How are the players? Depends on how aggressively you would get 4bet by the orginal raiser and also cold 4bet by anyone behind and how often you get cold called and called by the pfr.

And how tight are they opening to begin with?

You can look up a gto chart to get the baseline but you will want to adjust based on these other considerations.

Depends a lot on the player but against the typical loose passive opening too much I'd say slightly tighter at QJs, 99, KQo, and some A5s.

Just building off this - a base line 3bet range will change depending on the position of the opener in live games but also dependent upon the player themself. If they're in there raising with a frequency that approaches what you'd expect from someone who maybe looked at a PF chart at least a few times in their life its wider than the weak passive gen pop live room player. The weak but not so passive though i'd lump into the former category moreso than the tighter range.

Also - the kind of player they are will usually let you know if their raising range is elastic based off position or if its just a static set of hands only no matter the position.

Regarding your specific example I'm going to tighten up a bit and probably drop most bluffs and not worry about polarizing my range whatsoever. A loose passive raising range maybe bottoms out at QQ+, AQs+, AKo. I've seen even some slightly active players limp call AKo but raise AJs - weird idiosyncratic behaviors based off some bizarre strat they wrote themselves.

And you can widen that range as the position on the linear scale of weak passive ---> somewhat active but still mediocre reg isnt just fixed points but adaptive to what you glean from their play. I'd definitely start adding back some polarized bluffs there too but way less than what would be standard according to most PF charts say.

So vs the above range of a loose passive Id stil be 3betting something like TT+ or JJ+ KJs+, and AKo. Maybe somethin like ATs or KTs could be in there for somethin i'd shift most suited connectors to call (56s, 67s, 78s) until sufficient evidence presents that its wider than that.

As far as tightening up that range maybe drop KTs, KJs and TT and swap out ATs for AJs say since its highly unlikely they'll ever realize the disitinction in your calling range/3bet range with em etc.

You can prolly keep that same range from the HJ for all the UTG positions from a loose passive villain. And if you wanna start adding more hands A5s plays well and hit a wheel or A3s for board coverage (again, not as necessary as opponents are not thinking of things like that)

Assuming UTG2 has mostly been limping, I'd give his raise more respect, by flat calling more, and 3B'ing a tighter range, probably TT+, AK, AQs, and KQs. So TT and KQs are the bottom of that range.

I haven't played 1/2 in years. I mostly played 1/3 for the last few years before moving up to 2/5. My 3B range is going to vary a lot with my reads on opponents. Against players who open too wide, and don't know how to defend against light 3B's, I'm going to be raising a much wider range, with more SC's in it, and more middling PP's.

My experience has been that a lot of loose passive low stakes players don't have much of a fold button when an aggro player 3B's them, and their 4B range is super-narrow. So it leads to weird spots post flop, where they show up with stronger hands that wouldn't be in a better player's flat calling range OOP, like QQ and AKs. When they don't have a 4B range beyond AA/KK, a big chunk of my usual 3B range becomes a flat calling range.

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I might be in the dinosaur category here, but at low stakes I'm keeping a tight 3b range in any position in response to an EP raise, until I have reason to deviate from it (e.g evidence that the player is looser and more agressive than typical low stakes or overfolding to 3b), so JJ+, AQs+, AKo wouuld be my default.

I lean toward folding hands like KQo and maybe even AJo. The line for pocket pairs to 3b could be 99 or TT.
You'd have to discern if this player has a raise size tell, in which case you can open up your 3b range a little.

Seems fine assuming LP isnt playing a 45/13 preflop range where the loose is mostly limps.

Whenever i see questions like this I do find it strange, in that like… are you really playing a static range vs lp fish? Whats so fun about poker, especially live is that it aint that simple. I feel like the skill level and looseness of the fish are wildly different and affect how often i 3 bet, as well as live reads, and table dynamics including how often ive 3 bet recently.

The other day, V1 LOONNNNG looks at his cards and opens, V2 LONNNNG looks and calls, folds to me in sb and bb is holding his cards to fold, and i just put in a healthy 3 bet witb 84s and take it down.

Your varied and extensive replies lead me to two conclusions: 1) I'm often 3betting too wide in the HJ. I always introduced myself as a TAG, even after I widened my 3bet range. I never thought I was playing LAG. 2) Whether you play nitty or laggy depends wholly on your read of the UTG opener. But the consensus is to give an open raise from the UTG respect. Only the worst players open raise with QTo.

In the UTG, some loose passives in my cardroom have a wider open-limp range than open-raise one. They open-limp down to KJo and open-raise only with QQ+, AQs+. Against those players, 3 betting down to KQo and JTs is bad. But other players never 3bet with nothing less than QQ+, AQs+ but regularly open-raise UTG with QTo, which they suspect is a decent hand, then facing the 3x raise oop, something they rarely make themselves, they fold. So against this player, does 3betting in the HJ with 88 or JTs here make sense?

Agree with the others mostly. If the player is an unknown then my 3bet range would be similar to your own with some suited Aces thrown in as well. If on the other hand they had demonstrated that they had an EP limping range then I would assume that their raising range would be pretty snug and would tighten up significantly as a result (and in the HJ - but no earlier - consider introducing a flatting range)

Random thinks...

1) I don't think it's too big a mistake to 3B wide from LP, so long as you can make disciplined folds pre or post, and generally out-play your opponents post, especially when IP. I like making it hard for players behind me to continue by over-calling, so I think the value we lose by 3B'ing too wide is at least partially offset by having position more often going to the flop.

2) Almost everything I'm doing at low stakes is going to be run through a live read filter for making exploitative adjustments. My ranges for every decision are all opponent-dependent.

3) I think a lot of low stakes players open from EP way too wide, so how much respect I give their raises is going to likewise depend on my reads.

4) At low stakes, I try to find the balance between playing aggro to take pots down pre-flop (pre-rake, in my cardrooms), and letting the game come to me more, by flat calling and seeing some flops, to let the hand develop.

I think the implication for your line of questioning here is that I don't mind 3B'ing XX sometimes and calling with that same hand other times. In fact I think it's beneficial to mix it up and not always 3B or always flat call. I suspect that with some of the more marginal hands in your 3B range, there's probably little difference in EV between 3B'ing and flat calling.

Hope something in there is helpful.

Against a bad player, i.e., almost anyone who is likely to be playing 1-2, my hijack 3-betting range versus a farjack opener is going to be something like {TT+, A5s, A9s+, KJs+, QJs, JTs, AQo+}. Against a good player, who might happen to have sat down in 1-2 while waiting for a seat in a real game, my range would look more like {TT+, A5s, AQs+, AQo+}.

If the pool wants to see flops and is unlikely to 4-bet without AA or KK, then 3-betting "too wide" is not a bad thing at all, because you can print money with properly sized flop c-bets.

1/2 players don't think that deeply about the game. Whatever has happened recently is on their minds. So, if I haven't played a hand in an hour and someone is opening too often pre-flop, I can 3-bet pretty wide. They just assume aces or kings. Players and image are more important than ranges imo.
I like there to be some cold callers in there, too. Rake-free money is the best money.