OK I didn't wanna hijack that thread about short-stacks that minraise your blinds, so here's a new thread....

We are on the button

Say the blinds have 1 or 2 decent short-stacking regs that squeeze a decent range, but play pretty honestly if there is a 3-bet in front of them - the pot is opened by HJ or CO - a decent laggy reg whom, if stacks behind us were deeper, we would be 3-betting with a considerably wide range - opens to 3x.

CLIFFS for the rest of this post: You can stop reading the rest now and start discussing what your strategy is here, or you can read on...



Now... in general, we will be 3-betting our good hands for value, but this looks super- strong, because we seem to not be worried about the 20 bb stacks and we have committed ourselves against them if we make our normal raise to ~10 BB's.

I don't know what most people's range for 3-betting here is, but mine is pretty narrow, since, if one of the short-stackers shoves, we are basically committed to a call with any 2.
Accordingly, this makes the normal 3/4bet dynamic a bit skewed - as some people don't seem to care that you 3-bet with shorties in the blinds, but some people will 4-bet very honestly because they think you are 3-betting honestly and it's hard to tell what's what.

Sooooo, as I see it, we have a few options:
1) Flat everything we want to play with
- esp at 200nl, where stacks don't get in light very often without extensive history, you will lose value - That is, obviously, with 100 BB stacks all around, flatting all your hands OTB vs an LP open is not the best way to play, so flatting like this forces us to play sub- optimally. However, we do induce some squeezes, etc.

2) Completely ignore the stacks of the blinds and 3bet with the exact same range as if they had 100 BB's.

3) 3bet to the standard ~10 BB's, but, for your light 3-bets, do them with hands that have decent equity when you are forced to call a shove from the blinds - such as Ax, Kx(?), small pairs(?), My problem with this is that I don't know a great range. We could also start 3-betting a wider value range like TT, AT+, KQ, etc, but my hunch is that this will lead to many sticky situations when we have to play post-flop against the opener.

4) We min 3-bet a wide range. I'm just throwing this out there - I think it's pretty interesting. It will certainly force us to play some weird pots because we'll get called a lot, but it could also create a dynamic where they can 4-bet to like ~15 BB's and we can 5-bet with the option of folding to a shove. I don't love it, but it certainly should be part of the discussion.


OK.... discuss! I'm also interested in what alterations you would make to your strategy if the blinds have slightly bigger stacks like 25 BB or slightly smaller stacks like 15 BB.

If they play honestly, which I feel they have to with a 3bet in front of them, then they won't be 3betting often enough for it to make a huge difference. Say they put our 3bet range on 5% from that spot and know we'll have to call. They only want to 3bet that range or less knowing they have zero fold equity. So even with 2 shorties in the blinds, that's only a cumulative of 10% of the time we'll face a heavy value shortie shove and have to call with our range. I tailor my decisions to the most likely event, and that is the shorties both folding and forcing the initial raiser into a tough spot.

That said, if you're going crazy with >10% of hands in that spot, it gets dicier. I also think it's key to take a note on a shortie when a light hand shows up, like say I 3bet there with KK and a shortie in the blinds shoves AQo or 99 and I stack him. That's good info, that means they (and others) might think it's likely we have 55 or 78s or A2s. Most of the time I see this, I'm looking at a top 3-4% hand from the shortie and I'm a lot happier when I have QQ+/AK than when I have to call with AJo and 77.

always remember that shortstackers are more afraid of you than you are of them.

I raise 2.5x from the steal positions (sometimes from MP if there are multiple SSers), and feel good about my regular PF steals, since they fold more than the regular player.

Im 3betting regardless....if they have a hand that can 4 bet short, then they are gonna push my call anyway..
I will tighten up my raising range with some shorties left to act..but not 3 betting range.

haha, this is golden

Option 3 is the best. Basically you can 3-bet on the lighter side, but do it with hands that don't play terrible against a shortstack shove, like AT, 44, KJ, etc.

I would avoid doing it with more marginal stuff like suited connectors or anything that doesn't play well against an allin range.

AT and KJ? Seems like these hands, while they do play well against the shorties the ~10% of the time that they do shove, play very poorly against hands that call 3-bets OOP. This seems bad to me, but I suppose it could get them to spaz 4bet in the future with weak holdings.

Wasn't your whole point you wanted to bluff 3-bet but couldn't do it with the weaker hands?

Raising AT is still a bluff because we are planning on giving up to a 4-bet.

There is obviously no need to worry about the short stacks when we have KK/AA.