That is why I would flat JJ here, but 3! JTs or something like that.

Except you won't

you're not giving people nearly enough credit.

you say that a 'perceptive' reg should be folding here with AKo and JJ, possibly even QQ here. why is it so easy to imagine someone making that adjustment, but so difficult to imagine someone adjusting to the fact that people fold to 3bets too much? you say "except you won't" like 3betting suited aces or broadways at low frequency is difficult to do.

and that's pretending that you're not a reg who many will have large data sets on, where if you actually did routinely make these kinds of folds it would become immediately apparent in your hud stats.

You're conflating two things here: "easy" with "possible", and "random human (someone)" with "good player"

As I said in post #21 I'm GII vs a random human for the reason I said in post #6 to wit:

So I actually never said either of these things in the manner you're claiming:

Not giving them enough credit for what? The data over 100ks of hands speak for themselves. You can't fake data.

Have you ever split 3b data into all-in and not all-in and studied this spot? If the answer is yes then what did you find? I have, so if if your answer is no then youre just playing devil's advocate at this point.

When push comes to shove, nitty humans aren't clicking that 3b button, so you can stamp your feet all you want about how "easy" it easy to 3b someone but humans just aren't doing it. They're just not, because they're nits (And if you really wanted to "show him" then there are way better marginal 3bs than suited anythings in this spot--as I keep mentioning, and you and deuce keep glossing over [because you're wrong] these are the worst 3bs and would not be polar enough [like I also keep mentioning]). Any half decent player is playing pure 4b or fold here bc that's the highest EV strategy and a mere 2 mins of studying these spots reveals that which should be already obvious.

We're taking about two different things: how good, and yes perceptive humans respond (players who've datamined properly and studied their ass off compared to those who haven't) and how everyone else responds.

Why is easy to imagine a good, perceptive human is 4betting so tight here? Because literally 2 mins of proper datamining and then modeling this spot reveals the very simple and ultimately very obvious conclusion that that's the best way to respond to nitty, linear, underbluffed LJ vs MP 25bb 3bNAI ranges.




And you're way overestimating how well other regs have built their HUD and how much 25bb LJvMP 3betting gets done to give credible samples for individual players. These stats are only credible on a population level.



And, to top if off, as I also said:
So stop pretending like I'm like just blindly advocating for overfolding 90% of our open range every single time.

Post some PT4 stats if you like, filtered for this spot, let's see what the population (i.e. a random human) is doing in this spot in your sample.

It's not really meaningful though if you haven't created custom stats in SQL to get a proxy of all-in vs not-all-in sizing (like I have), but it's at least a start.

I'd wager you see something like 5% overall empirical 3b freq, of which about half is 3b not-all-in

i'm not saying that all people will be 3betting someone who habitually overfolds vs 3bet. i'm saying that some subset will be 3betting more liberally (striving to emulate the gto approach) and another (smaller) subset will be 3betting far beyond optimal as an exploit because they think either you specifically or the population in general plays too tight against 3bets here. looking at peoples' fold to 3bet% is not advanced hud work. i do it, and i'd imagine a non trivial percent of regs are doing it. i love these spots specifically because it looks so strong. i'd almost rather 3bet here as a rando bluff than on the button/co because of how little credit a 3bet from the button/co gets.


you said,
"I would make that exploit (folding QQ and AKo) the first time facing a 3b against virtually any human who 3bs me in that spot under the assumption that they, like the data says, are so tight and linear to where I feel perfectly comfortable making that read."

i didn't say you'd always do it, or that you couldn't have a read to point you in another direction. but this is your general population read. and maybe you're right....

this is actually something im currently working on. I'm skeptical of most claims as to population reads because it's really difficult to do but if you have done it successfully congrats.

what's your methodology for estimating the general population 3bet range here?

I would flat call JJ, as I don't want to 3!/fold it, and it doesn't play well against a 4! shove range. I would 3! QQ+ and whatever I decided to use as bluffs. Could possibly sometimes flat AA also. I am fine with seeing a flop in a single raised pot with JJ and seeing a flop with suited broadway or whatever if my bluff 3! gets flat called.

If people are overfolding to ep 3!s more, then bluff 3! more rather than 3!/fold JJ. There is a problem that there is a table to act. If you get cold called or something, then you have to be careful that you may be up against a strong hand.

Really good thought provoking thread ( rare!) I feel like I argue both sides in my head every time I hit a "cooler" like this. would love to hear about other spots where data suggests that pop are massively unbalanced Eggs ( but you would be right to say that I should do that work myself...)

+1

I'm literally only tuning into this forum recently to view this thread.

Also for DB's sage advice. Keep it up DB - just be careful not to repeat yourself. Not sure however about your use of suited broadways for 3bet bluffs, but I don't want to get into that. And be careful not to repeat yourself.

You can't. Players behind have cards and will step to the fore.

For maximum hand strength and playability of hands to weak to flat call in ep with. Axs has an ace blocker, but is much weaker and less playable. In other situations suited broadway would be good enough to flat with, so I usually would not 3! with them.

Suited Broadways have bad blockers of hands that UTG will raise fold with, hands like AT/KJ. I think that makes AWs best, followed by hands like 76s, which don't block raise folds...

I want to thank everybody for posting here. Especially Eggs.

This spot is my personal nightmare. This and QQ.

I misread this as an EP open and as Eggs points out it is really MP opening 8 handed. So I think with a wider opening range we probably have to 3-bet with JJ. Live I would definitely flat sometimes as well but I am seeing that should be the minority of times. I would alternate my play especially if I had done something similar at the table earlier and had tabled my cards at SD.

I would not be 3-betting to 7.5x over a 2x opening raise however. Given we have 27 bb's I would likely 3-bet raise to 5.5x to 6x. I think we will get far more calls this way (especially from smaller pairs) and that is where we can maximize.

I also think that Villain will 4 bet shove almost always with AK here given he has over 80 bb's, so unless I have a particular read, my default would still be to call. [Edit: unless we have been 3-betting smaller in other spots (like 6x). Because it looks like we can't fold and also that we want villain to fold - like we have exactly JJ. So it might behoove us to fold. In practice I would never be in this position because my 3-bet sizing would always be consistent - based on stack size not hand strength]

I think I would consider folding JJ to the 4-bet shove if I had more than 50% of villain's stack because at that point I do think that villain starts to fold AK sometimes.

I also think I would take into consideration my image at the table and the skill of villain. If it seems that I am tight on my 3-bets (not really true) then I have to consider folding. So it will matter how much I have 3-bet up to that point.

I don't want to derail on a side issue, but don't suited broadways also block all premium hands, TT+, AK, AQ. If you are including ATs maybe AJs you have some blockage of AA.

An Ace is always a 'good' blocker' A king is mostly a good blocker. Yes, a Ten blocks TT, but it also blocks some of the weaker UTG raises, like ATo, QT/JT/T9s for example.

A Ten blocks 3 combos of TT. It blocks 7 of those weaker hands (yes, some of those won't be in opponents range).

Using Acevedo's ranges, UTG has 9 'weak' Tx combos. Having a Ten in your hand isn't good.

That's pretty interesting. I learned something about reverse blockers. I guess people learned this from solvers. I heard that sort of thing on RIO videos, but didn't understand what they were taking about. So A/K are good when bluffing preflop, but J/T/9 are bad.

There are issues of playability and hand strength when flat called. JTs plays better seeing a flop than A4s. Is the blocker issue more important than that issue?

Don't the playability issues reinforce -- rather than work against -- the reverse blocker issues, as they make JTs and the like much better candidates to flat with than A4s and the like?

In general, but I was thinking that suited broadway were not strong enough to flat call an UTG + 1 raise UTG +2 and should be used as bluffs. Since stronger hands were available, I wouldn't bluff something like A4s. I hadn't thought about the reverse blocker as well as the blocker issue.

Not sure, but I think it mainly depends on whether your Villain continues through a call or a jam more often. At this stack depth, a lot of Villain's will be either jamming or folding; vs them playability doesn't matter.

At deeper stack depths, where flatting the 3! is more likely, then playibility takes on a bigger role (obviously).

thats one of those 50/50 spots nothing can do most of the time unless tell of sorts

I’d also be interested to know whether 7.5bb off a 27bb stack is optimal, and how a smaller 3! sizing would impact (widen presumably) any V 4! response.

Good thread.

as far as general strategy for LJ 27.5bb facing this UTG7 open, a monker solution is the best place to start instead of trying to divine the answer through one's personal crystal ball

i'd imagine it's 1. flats, 2. jams, 3. very polarized 3b NAI (AA,KK,AKs for value, all "bluffs" low frequency stuff [e.g. like ATo ~25%, A4s/A5s ~25%, some low suited broadways similar, etc.]), but again, I wouldn't engage in such guesswork and would look up a chart

obv. stack sizes behind effect things to whatever extent but I'm just talking starting point

I'd imagine like JJ/TT/AKo give or take are some of the main jams here

The thing about your 3b NAI sizing (3.6x, very large for this depth) is you're kind of just broadcasting to OOP that you have a hand you're "going with" for better or worse. So he gets to play range really accurately against you--like, there's no reason to trap AA by flatting as OOP here b/c you're prob never folding, and he's just risking you getting scared of a particularly nasty flop and managing to release your hand when he could've just stacked you pre

Similarly, I would expect 0 "light" shoves from him b/c of the above so once you range that out you're not doing very hot vs. the 4! range (a range you'll never know for sure, but we can rest assured it is very, very tight)

As far as what I'd do upon facing the 4! jam, I can't answer, would never find myself in node

Yeh, the 3! size is really awful and donk style. Once you 3! this size, it is a fold to the shove. It is possible that sizing like this could be good as a bluff, because it will be read as face up a hand the you are calling with and probably not AA.

I would look at this OP, because bet size tells like this are probably a really serious leak in your play. This is really bad, because you want to play a hand in a way that gives no information or deceptive information, not accurate information about your hand and plan.