Hi All,

I found a spot that happens pretty frequently and I am realizing I have no clue how to play. I am 3betting from the BB vs. BTN with a pretty wide range and basically never know what to do on the flop. I have looked for YouTube videos and other content on the topic but I feel like I am getting mixed information.

I feel like very often I just whiff the flop, c-bet and V calls, and then x/f turn.

I'm hoping someone could shed some light on their thought process when we get to the flop in these spots. Below are three flops I recently saw as the BB 3 bettor vs. BTN

1) T64 two clubs.

2) 3T3 two clubs.

3) J92 rainbow

4) A97 rainbow

Curious what sizings you would use on these boards and how you would select your betting range.

Here is my BB 3! strategy vs. BTN

How did you design this range?

It's based off the GTO wizard solution for 50NL. Seems like their solutions polarize vs. BTN and CO, while mixing their full range vs. UTG and HJ. Not really sure why all offsuit combos are a 50/50 mix, but it's a pretty easy to implement range for me.

What kind of Button RFI do you expect to play vs?

Ah ah, I can relate. "OK, GTOw says I need to 3bet Qh3h sometimes. Let's do that! 13BB in your face, button! Oh... they called. Flop is A72 rainbow, the pot is huge already and I have a garbage hand. What would DooDooPoker do?"

GTOw has BTN RFI @ 42% (opening size 2.5BB)

The polar BB 3bet strategy it proposes relies on BTN folding 68% against a 13BB 3bet.

We risk 12BB to steal a pot where there is already 1.5BB (the blinds) + 2.5BB (BTN open) = 4BB. So if BTN folds 1 - (4 / 12) = 66% of the time, we breakeven on our 3bet. So if BTN plays the optimal strategy, we don't need to win any more $, € or £ when they call the 3bet. We can just x/f all flops if we want.

Of course the solver does *not* x/f all flops. Sometimes the texture is just too good (to take OP example n°2, it will bomb the T33 2-club flop even with Q4s) and sometimes we flop something. But it won't hesitate to x/f A97r. This flop texture is a very frequent check anyway : BTN has a lot of suited A's in their preflop calling range and we have good hands we don't want to bet often. So we can x/f our garbage and x/c or x/r AQs for example.

So I would say there is no general rule, as in all postflop spots in poker, and the fact we have garbage sometimes doesn't change much. We just need to accept we don't need to fight *too* hard with our garbage.

Qh3h would be part of our bluff raising range here, not value. If we are choosing to polarize BB vs. BTN we will be raising weak hands.

Are you suggesting not to polarize here at 5nl because V's are weak? but then we end up calling way more from the BB and falling into the rake trap.

My bad!, I thought your question was specifically about the bluff part of your 3betting range ("I know I need to 3bet garbage sometimes, but what do I do on the flop when I get called ?")

If it's about BB vs BTN 3bet pots in general, the question is even more vast.

Yea it is a pretty wide open question. I just honestly don't even know where to begin to learn playing this spot. I've looked at a few post flop sims and to be honest those solutions are just way over my head.

1) T64 two clubs.

2) 3T3 two clubs.

3) J92 rainbow

4) A97 rainbow

Those are what you are asking about right? I kind of see your issue here and its just that his whole range will call you on the flop to see a turn, he has overcards or some backdoor draw or a flush draw in most of these. What did you expect to fold here? I can see people folding on board 4 but not on board 1 2 and 3. I would say you could check fold the hands with no equity that you have and cbet the hands with equity but that's a little oversimplified. Just know who you are 3betting and learn when you can bluff the turn on a blank.