Short-handed 15/30 game:

- 1 super loose late-20s player generating lots of action. Gets postflop and floats flop with nearly anything but doesn't seem to be making huge errors on turn/river
- middle-aged Asian man that seems like he wants to look like he gives action but actually plays kind of tight (the whale is teasing him telling him to straddle but he says he can't and something about "gotta pay the bills")
- young 20s kid that is the only person not on a first-name basis with the others, basically a friendly-new-kid-nit image (me)
- 1 good, thinking loose late-20s player battling with the whale. Doesn't really continue post without some sort of hand and doesn't pick on me or the Asian man as much as he seems to just want to get in pots with the whale.

Whale mucks, Asian man opens BTN, I call 87 in SB, good thinking player peels BB.

The good player will almost always peel BB here and will do it with slightly lower frequency if I 3!, not sure what is best here.

Flop ($90): A72

check, check, bet, I call, BB folds, BTN says "you looked like you wanted to raise" in an amused/teasing tone.

Not really sure what that's about, didn't think much about raising. There are A-high textures where I'm not thrilled about calling 2nd pair OOP with another behind, but this one seems ok.

Turn ($120): A

What's our approach here? c/c down? c/c turn decide river? ever a reason to bet the turn? Flop is a texture I would expect BTN to bet all of his airballs as well as all of his Ax, so obviously the distribution in that range changes drastically with the A turn. Enough so that we can bet our hand for protection? Confused as to how our ranges are doing relative to one another on this turn. Thanks for your help.

Three bet pre. General rule of thumb is to never cold call a raise first in. Plus, BTN's range is likely wide (> 40% is probably a minimum), and attackable. You'll get to take down the pot w/ a flop cbet a lot, versus just passively trying to hit.

As played, you seem to have answered your own question. If villain will double barrel this dryish board w/ high frequency, when we have a pair and the sole good draw possible, why would we deny him this chance? X/c down.

This is live and you already have $10 in the pot from the small blind? If so, I disagree with 3! or fold. In a 2/3 SB, you can have a cc range.

Absolutely, and medium-strong suited connectors like 87 suited hit smack in the middle of it. When I played 15/30, I called with this hand in the SB every day and twice on Sunday.

Just call down and x/raise a heart on the river, OP.

Oh yeah, I missed that it's a 2/3 structure. In that case, cc is probably fine. I still would three bet this particular hand so that my 3 bet range isn't weighted towards UI SD value too much. Plus I really want to be playing offense against the guy who has stuff like K3s in his range.

pre seems like it doesn't matter too much. i could see arguments for all three options.

postflop seems like standard wa/wb. not sure what you mean about his distribution changing a ton on the turn. i mean yes he has fewer ax combos now but he still is either way ahead of us or way behind us. donking turn lets him get away from air cheaply instead of potentially bluffing it once more (costing us money), and it lets him punish us when he's strong (costing us money)

as to thinking about protection on the turn, it might be useful for you to compare the pot size relative to how many outs a hand-that-you-are-protecting-against might have. plus that's only a portion of his range obviously.

live x-factor: button's speech makes me think it's more likely he's strong, but that doesn't affect anything here imo

Who benefits more in a bloated pot, the person in or out of position? It could be that 3 betting is genius/correct, but "playing offense" isn't one of the reasons. I think you do have a calling range in this blind structure and I don't think it is always better to have the betting lead (especially with this hand). If you want to talk range construction for cc and 3 betting ranges and clearly show that 87s is needed for balance in the 3 betting range, that sounds reasonable. What's the whole balanced SB range look like?

Not sure what you mean about K3s. It is a fine hand for button stealing. Every good player has it in his range, so how does my willingness to raise 87s make the guy with K3s sad? It is towards (not at, but towards) the bottom of his wide range. How does the average hand in his range feel about a 3 bet? I must be missing the folding argument. Is there one?

If villain is good, he knows exactly what you have here on the turn and should play it perfectly.

I'd fold in a 1/3 SB structure.

Nice post thank you.

Glad that this has started to turn to a cool discussion about our options pre and how the blind structure affects it. Do we take into consideration the approach that BB is going to take here? I think he ~always peels when I flat but views me as kind of a nit and would be more inclined to fold a lot of bad Kx/Qx and random suited cards after I 3! pre, though the effect of me being a nit may be sort of cancelled out by the fact that this guy on the BTN is only going to cap like 5-10% of the time here and call the rest so BB gets an ok price after all.

We are WA or WB. C/R the flop and go from there.

The way the hand was played, just C/C the turn.

nope, that's not what wa/wb is

there are different ramifications for each play.

coldcalling pf = big blind probably calls too, so the pot will be 3handed instead of heads up. and likely you don't coldcall your entire playing range in this spot (most players 3bet their big stuff), so you are giving info to the other players that you're not in the strong part of your range.

3betting pf = big blind often folds, so the pot will be heads up a lot. you're not giving away info about where you are in your range, and most players will assume you have a decently strong hand when you 3bet in this spot.

you're oop either way, but in one situation you have the initiative and likely will cbet most flops, whereas in the other situation you don't have the initiative and will likely check most flops. the potsize will be about the same in both situations (6 sb vs 7 sb).

shouldn't the playability of our hand multiway vs HU be taken into consideration? For instance 55 or A9 don't do great multiway and I would be defo looking to 3! (in part) because of this, but a hand like 87s may be easier to play multiway.

I ask because I want to know what to prioritize when going through a thought process regarding what hands to 3! in this spot

Interesting discussions about the preflop action. I see merit in both calling and in raising. I suppose we could give consideration to the reads as a potential tiebreak of how to approach this particular scenario.

The Button is described as on the tighter side. The Big Blind is described as a good, thinking player. I would favor a three bet here under the logic that I want to maximize fold equity against the tighter button and minimize the amount of hands that the good, thinking player enters the pot with. A hand like 87 suited seems to fit well here as it's a hand that we can balance our stronger 3 bets with and has tendencies to be in our bluffing range after the flop (maximize our fold equity).

In a scenario where the BB is a weaker player and is more likely to make mistakes, I think it strengthens the case for a smooth call to allow him to join in and make those mistakes.

JLot

3handed isn't really multiway, and if you only coldcall medium implied-odds type stuff, you are giving a lot of free information to your opponents very early in the hand. but there aren't really great implied odds in this kind of situation since there are few opponents and the pot isn't likely to get very big.

Maybee I'm wrong but I think 3b or folding pre is significantly better than cold calling here, and I've played tons of 2 chip 3 chip over the years.

As played pretty obvious check call 3 times.

Maybe I'm just turning in to the crazy oldad who remembers the "good ol days" but the more I come back to 2+2 the worse the limit advice seems to get. Folding is the worst option by far but how can people seriously advocate to just call here?

Let's pretend we have even a mediocre ability to hand read, how does calling do anything but let the btn know exactly what we have and let him play his hand perfectly against us in position? I mean seriously if you're a good player and a non-idiot just cold calls in the SB don't we already basically know 97% of his range?

I dont disagree with you, which is why I think you could make an argument for folding 7 high rather than having that problem. Maybee I should have been more clear that I think folding and calling are both significantly worse than 3 betting. I guess I've never really considered if calling is actually better than folding since I pretty much never do either.

Nah, my fsult. I agree with you 100%. Raising >>>>>> calling >>>>>>>>>>>>folding.

I just can't fathom why anyone would advocate calling over 3betting here

pretty much this. 3bet or fold pre. after 3bettting, cbet flop 100% if it's heads up. if the pot goes off 3way, then you can check the flop instead of cbetting a certain percentage of the time.

cold calling because of the 2/3 blind structure is something that no one in this thread understands completely because no one has studied it enough to do it correctly. it's essentially the same reason we don't use a mixed strategy when opening the pot pre flop. once we have an open limping range and a raising range, we open up the branches of the game tree to a point where we can't manage in real time. so we simplify by playing raise or fold. this spot is similar to that, so we 3bet or fold. if i'm going to cool call, it's because letting in the bb, because he's so bad, outweighs the benefits of 3betting to push him out. and in that case, i'm going to just call my entire continuing range in order to keep it simple. also, it seems like a 2/3 structure would give me more incentive to 3bet rather than call because the pot is bigger and i have to put in less money as opposed to 1/2, 2/4, or 1/3 structure.

as played, k/c the turn and k/r the river if you make a flush

I know you're doing a bunch of work away from the table, but
has no meaning in a live poker game. You're saying the homework is impossible, so what? Just because the analysis is simpler doesn't mean it is the right choice. At some point, the SB size must be large enough to put calling in the mix. Is that $10? $15? $19.50?

Clearly, the BB can call sometimes and not be wrong. What if we were in the BB and there was a straddler who rarely 3 or 4 bets but who will always call. Clearly, we'd have a cc range there.

So while it is possible that not cold calling here is correct and that we always three bet, I put zero stock in the idea that keeping the game tree smaller is a reason to raise.

Question - If we have mixed up our play some during the session to better disguise our ranges and have shown down a hand like AJo in the exact same type of situation, where we just called out of the SB to the same BTN open raise, does that bring cc preflop back into play, instead of 3! every time with this type of hand?

i'm not saying the homework is impossible. i'm saying no one has done the work, so no one in this thread, including myself, really knows how to apply a mixed strategy correctly. if your goal is to make fewer mistakes than your opponents and simplifying your strategy keeps you from making more mistakes, then yes, it is the right choice.

Now we are getting somewhere.

I think 3-betting 87 suited out of position is honestly not good. You are going to be out of position with an awful hand with no showdown value, which is going to commit you to firing multiple barrels a lot. Further, if the BB starts noticing what you are doing, he or she can call or cap a lot and make things even worse.

I can't imagine it's going to be that +EV even if the SB is great and the button is terrible (and most buttons who raise wide ranges are not terrible).

But if we call, we are usually putting in either 22 percent of the pot 3-ways with a hand that generally has much more than 22 percent equity against a stealer and a BB defender, or we are putting in 26 percent of the pot heads up with a hand that generally has much more than 26 percent equity when the BB folds.

So there are great mathematical reasons to call here. But if we do so, we turn our hand face up. Not necessarily! Because we could also call some of the following hands:

Ax suited
AK-AJ
AA-JJ
Suited broadways.

There should be a way to achieve a rough balance of our calling range here. That would seem much better to me than either dumping the 87 suited and losing $10 or getting heads up out of position as the aggressor with 8 high.

Lawdude, I think your post and reasoning is really bad. You say "there are great mathematical reasons to call here" but your math is just wrong. You can't just stove 7-8s 3 ways cold call the sb and realize so little of your equity.

Button raises J8o, we call 67s sb. Flop is A55.... What's our equity and what's our line?
Button raises J8o we 3 bet 67s sb, flop is A55, what's our equity? What's button' line?

Not to mention your further advocating taking hands that are extremely profitable 3 bets and calling with them in order to balance out weaker hands? This is just terrible as well.