6 handed badugi cash game, CO opens with a raise, folds to bb who has 83Ar, call or 3bet?

In 2-7TD, I've often heard to 3bet all 1 card draws for balance. It seems like this might apply less in badugi since the bb will have a relatively high number of 1 card draws to defend. If we're not 3betting all of them, what's the cutoff for tri-quality? I'd probably 3bet any 3 to the wheel or even 3 to a 5 but not worse than that.

This is fundamentally different from 2-7. You are way behind his range...just call.

i went through a short and very costly phase where i was 3-betting hands like these for balance.

results were pretty awful.

There is such a spread of value between the different one card hands and there are fewer groups of hands, so 3-betting all playable one card draws is not going to work, especially OOP. To balance your range you'll need to play a mixed strategy of calling 2 card draws and some 1 card draws, and 3 betting another mix of mostly stronger 1 card draws. Or you can just call this position every time you are drawing.

It depends on his exact cards, but you are about a 60% favorite over most of his two card draws and worse one card draws. If he has a better three card that flips. The problem is that the worse hands are in the minority of his range. Even on a steal I don't think every player opens a ragged T, and a Jack high three card is usually better to convert to two or fold.

Because badugi is not as broadly studied player tendencies will vary more, including opening/stealing ranges. If you can narrow down villain's tendencies even a little you can make more accurate decisions. A two card 6 or better is 17% of all hands and a three card 8 is 18.8%. All pat badugis make up another 6.3%. Putting this all together your A38r is behind villain's hand about 50-56% of the time and you are OOP (depending how many 9-tris and possibly T-tris are played).

Badugis get exponentially stronger the lower they go, so I think a three card 6 is enough to 3-bet pre-draw against any loose/steal range. You can go over the combinations like I did above and see that a three card 6 is ahead of significantly more of his opening hands just by beating three card 7s. A 6 also gains about 6% equity compared to A38r against A2. I think the worst hand in your pre-draw three-betting range should be somewhere in the three card 6s or 7s for this spot.

Isn't 3 to a 5 the same thing as 3 to a wheel? The wheel goes up to 5.

Wheel is a 4

What if in this scenario the button or SB had called? Still 3-bet a three-card 6?

Probably as OP says three to a 5 or better. It might not be balanced, but it's not that easy to exploit in a three-way pot either. I like that one because it's enough to showdown as a bluff catch if you think these guys snow in badugi (rarer than 2-7), and it should be able to value bet the end if they are both drawing one from the beginning.

Agree having a book on player is extremely important in this spot. Having a nut- or near-nut- 2-card redraw makes hands like 731 and 821 marginally good 3-bets from SB vs ranges that include enough 2-card hands because you will be a card ahead of a lot of opener's range and can reduce with enough cards that it becomes worth it to get it HU so you will be live to win tri vs tri. HU you can also choose to pat early UI vs opener's D2s and your snow lines can be more credible if you 3b.

If opener is always D1 then you preserve ambiguity about your hand by flatting most or all of your D1 range, and if villain is aggressive can induce later to maximize the value of your best tris and drawn hands. Having BB flat and D2 isn't the end of the world, but it does scavenge equity from the weaker of the other two hands in a 3-way pot, less so if BB plays poorly post.

I say flat most or all of your D1 range. You can flat all of it but if you want to 3b 123, 124 you can balance with some low flushes for snow lines.

I hate it when I'm playing observant opponents and they 3b me with just enough D1 hands OOP to maximize the value of their incompletes. I love it when I'm playing inattentive opponents who religiously 3b all their D1 hands OOP because then I have an information advantage.