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Originally Posted by MLjung
A question about defending against a SB-raise from the BB (apologies if this already has been asked and answered):
We cold call with a truckload of hands (45%).
It's hard to know how many hands exactly we need to call, but almost certainly if you work from the assumption that your opponent shouldn't be able to open 100% of hands profitably if he's opening to 3x, than you're going to need to defend enough with a combination of calling and 3-betting. You can make some assumptions about the EV of the bottom of your opponents opening range to help determine frequencies.
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I´m guessing we are 3-betting for value with JJ+, AJ+ and KQ
Why are you guessing this? There's no exact rule about what range of hands should be 3-bet over calling other than you do the one which is highest EV (duh). The hard part is determining whether a hand is higher EV as a 3-bet or a call. If you 3-bet the range that you listed above than your Kx and Qx ranges will be capped at KJ and QJ respectively which will give the SB an incentive to overbet / value bet "thinly" with hands like KJ and QJ post flop which will than give the BB an incentive to flat stronger hands (AA, AK, AQ). However, by flatting these hands preflop, the BB loses the ability to get more dollars preflop and gives the SB an opportunity to see 3 cards relatively cheaply. In addition, some hands like AK, AQ are more vulnerable to being outdrawn by weaker hands than hands like AA which needs to be considered. This process will go back and forth until an equilibrium is reached between both players.
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And to not have an unbalanced 3-betting range we need to add the appropriate number of 3-bet bluff-hands.
We can easily find out how many hands, but which hands?.
To be honest, I'm not so sure that it's easy to determine the appropriate number of bluffs since there aren't clear value and bluff hands, and since the equity hands changes so much on most flops ranges won't be perfectly polarized in most cases.
But to answer your question, the answer to which hands should be used as a 3-bet bluff, there's no easy answer other than hands which maximize it's EV (see duh above). This question is not easy to answer either. Things to keep in mind is that the more likely your opponent is to 4-bet or fold, than hands with blockers to his value continuation range (not bluffing range) are good. The more likely your opponent is to flat your 3-bet, the more important the playability of your hand vs his flatting range is important. His 3-bet flatting range will be stronger because of your 3-bet, so hands which can outdraw his stackig off range on the river will play well. In some respects, hands like 98o can make straights which will surely be strong enough when the Villain stacks off. However, if he's opening so wide from the BB that he needs to stack off very wide even in 3-bet pots, than hands like A2o might work better as a 3-bet if the high card strength has enough value equity (not saying this is the case). Than there's just a general idea that all the hands need to work together. In an earlier post in this thread, Matthew talked about how he's adjusting his 3-betting ranges from the blinds different than in the book. Although he didn't explain his reasoning, my guess is that the range he was using to 3-bet prior to the new one, didn't hit enough boards (Q high and Ten high boards), so he decided that hands which play fine as flats need to be 3-bet because he needs to have a certain amount of hand types on different boards. So with that in mind, you might want to think about which bluffing hands work well with the rest of your range. In other words, 98o is always going to work well as a bluff when you're value betting AA. A2o might work well as a bluff or it might also work as a hand that you can check-back on the flop when it hits top pair and use as a bluff catcher on Ax boards to protect your KK-TT hands on Ax boards. Maybe having a blocker is important there (just throwing it out there).
This is a complex subject and hard to model because it's preflop and so many assumptions need to be made and ranges are wide and equity will change a lot on different flops. I think Matt would also admit that it's hard to give exact answers. But if you go through his book, he brings up all of the above and some more ideas which you need to consider and weigh when making this decision.