At one of my regular games last Friday a bit of a disagreement developed over the term "3 BET".

We were playing NLHE. Post flop Person A bets about two thirds the pot, Person B raises and it comes to me. I re-raise and one of the players exclaims that if I "4 BET" the pot I must have a monster. Another player, also not in the hand, remarks that he can't see how that can be termed a "4 BET" as only 3 actions had taken place, bet, raise & my re-raise and that my action should be labeled a "3 Bet".

That made sense to me but the comment was made that after watching hours of the WSOP Main Event coverage over the past several days, it was pretty routine that a person making a raise of an initial post flop bet was labeled as "3 BETTING". I have also seen this series of events on the WSOP coverage and the professionals that are commentating have called the raise of an opening bet "3 BETTING" the pot.

I looked online and found a definition that dealt with pre-flop betting where the mandatory big blind was considered a bet, first to bet an amount higher than the big blind was considered the second bet and someone raising that bet was making a "3 BET". I couldn't find anything that really dissected post flop rounds and how the terms "3 BET" or "4 BET" where determined or defined.

Anybody have a clear answer and explanation? We want to include this in an upcoming episode of the Top Pair Home Game Poker Podcast (www.toppair.net).

It's much easier to think of this in limit-poker terms, where one-bet, two-bets, three-bets, four-bets/cap (or maybe 5/cap) seems straight-forward.

Three-bet is synonymous with re-raise.

Post-Flop: Bet = 1, Raise = 2, Re-Raise = 3
Pre-Flop: BB is the Bet, which is the cause of your confusion. Like guy above me, 3-bet started as a limit term and seems to have shifted (perhaps inappropriately) to NLHE.

This, although I wouldn't say it is inappropriate.

Should this action in your example had occurred preflop, then you 4-bet, since it was postflop, you 3 bet. The forced bet, or big blind, it still a bet for counting purposes.

Yup... 3-Bet = re-raise


First bet after the flop... a bet.
A raise of that bet... a raise. If TV called it a 3-bet, then they are wrong. Perhaps in that case, that person has re-raised preflop, and they were referring to that person as the 3-better preflop.

3 bets made = 3-bet. Someone's either

a) paying too much attention to poker announcers or

b) needs work on their counting skills.

In the case of pre-flop, it's a fairly common confusion because people tend to forget that the Big Blind counts as the first bet even if it's mandatory. I've run across this a number of times when I've mentioned a three bet, and people give me confused looks.

Turns out my example was in error.

My fuddled memory failed me. It was pointed out to me, when one of the actors read this post, that the specific scenario I outlined happened PRE-flop so the above explanations fall into line with what happened - Sorry.

Look for a retraction, correction and mea culpa in an upcoming episode.

lining up, fondling my club, for the beating ritual.

In some of the games i've played in: A 3-bet is the action a player takes when faced with a raise when they have Aces or Kings!

Pre flop the BB is a bet and a reraise is a 3-bet.
Post flop the bet is zero until someone bets. If it is raised, it is a reraise, a 3-bet. Just my interpretation probably not the correct one.

I officially turn in my nit club membership card.

Um, if it's the third bet in a row, it's a 3-bet.

Preflop: BB (bet 1), raise (bet 2), re-raise (bet 3)
Postflop: someone bets (bet 1), raise (bet 2), re-raise (bet 3)

Posting a BB is no more a bet than checking (betting zero) post flop

Preflop: call,call,call, raise, 3-bet

Postflop: check, check, check, bet (raise from zero), 3-bet.

epic fail.

"epic" is a bit harsh

Really? OK then, how about just "Fail"?

Has my vote

I vote epic fail. Because we all know a 3 bet is a bet of 3. 3, 3-hundred, 3-thousand, 3-hundred-thousand, etc.

Played at a local bar tourney the other day and the dude next to me kept referring to preflop raises to 3 BBs as a 3 bet and raises to 4 BBs as a 4 bet etc. So this inability to comprehend the lingo is pretty common.