Flop defense vs cbet's in 3BP's are over folded across micro-mid stakes on every site. 500zoom regs over fold to cbets in 3BP's by 12%.

I recently encountered a situation where I was put in a fringe spot OTF and was wondering how I should go about continuing with my range.

HH here

Hand History driven straight to this forum with DriveHUD 2 Poker Tracking Software

NL Holdem 1(BB)
HERO ($114.56) [VPIP: 28.8% | PFR: 24.7% | AGG: 37.9% | Flop Agg: 44.9% | Turn Agg: 34.5% | River Agg: 35.7% | 3-Bet: 12% | 4-Bet: 12.9% | Hands: 101175]
SB ($102.50) [VPIP: 31.8% | PFR: 31.8% | AGG: 62.5% | Flop Agg: 100% | Turn Agg: 33.3% | River Agg: 0% | 3-Bet: 25% | Fold to 3-Bet: 100% | 4-Bet: 0% | Hands: 24]
BB ($101.50) [VPIP: 6.3% | PFR: 6.3% | AGG: 0% | Hands: 19]
HJ ($117.11) [VPIP: 14.6% | PFR: 10.4% | AGG: 0% | Hands: 48]
CO ($146.94) [VPIP: 20% | PFR: 11.1% | AGG: 77.8% | Hands: 48]

Dealt to Hero: A J

HJ Folds, CO Folds, HERO Raises To $3, SB Raises To $11, BB Folds, HERO Calls $8

Hero SPR on Flop: [3.98 effective]
Flop ($23): 3 3 5
SB Bets $16.39 (Rem. Stack: $75.11), HERO ?

I think most people would fold here and that's a reasonable play since it's a 0EV spot. But if we start folding all mixed hands we end up over folding vs a big cbet.

Insert Sim



You can see that the all AJo are mixed, but look at the higher frequency calls. The AJx and AxJ hands call more than they fold and the other combos fold more than they call.

This is because we want to unblock our opponent's BDFD cbets, if we have a in our hand our opponent is more likely to have a weaker range

Insert Heuristic

Only continue with the offsuit combos and fold the other combos. This will make your defends much easier in game and weaken your opponent's cbetting range.

Thanks for reading.

my big thing with the nick howard stuff is this is how regs have played in the past. i think given the availablity of study tools we should assume regs in competitive games are going to play better, especially in the standard spots, going forward.

How many regs are really doing that much studying though? I would guess 90% arent aware of most of these things. Or they are like me and love the game and i enjoy learning these things and im fairly competent but i work a lot and have limited time to play so how many of these concepts am i really going to effectively implement and actually play correctly. Doodoo has probably been murdering me regularly on bovada. Any time i get into a weird spot where villain is doing something creative or something i don't expect i automatically assume its Doodoo and thus they must be bluffing

I think you are overestimating regs here but even if they do improve. It's more likely to be a small improvement so 12% to 10% not 12% to optimal.

haha I'm still a fish reg but I appreciate it

idk i dont think thats really true. i think the good regs get closer and closer to optimal and the bad regs just get beaten out of the games

im talking about midstakes regs, sure at micros people dont study / are clueless.

Interesting. Not super intuitive but makes sense when you think about it.

Nice post. These type of blocker effects can be confusing for me and it makes me feel like that meme with the confused lady face and math equations whizzing past her face. This helps to clear things up a bit.

Is this mostly for rainbow only?

Where are you getting your info from?

I have data that shows that it's still very true at midstakes. Midstakes regs still make a ton of mistakes in general, if they were as good as you are saying they would be high stakes regs.

Thanks BP I just learned this myself so I wanted to share it to help me out as well.

I actually don't know about two-tone I'm going to check.



So spade hands (obviously) and then non AJo is preferred. It pure folds AJ no so that makes sense.

Same theme as rainbow.

I know nick's twitter persona is pretty cringe, but one thing he's absolutely right about is that this sort of mindset holds a lot of people back. I know a lot of mid/high stakes players and they aren't gods, and still make a lot of mistakes

which part of what im saying do you disagree with? that regs who study get better over time and the ones who don't get beaten out of competitive games, or that midstakes regs study poker?

What you just listed is all obviously true, but you obviously disagree with the sentiment in doodoo's comment, whereas I do not

im confused. all i said is my problem with the data driven approach is its based on the past. somehow you guys turned that into me saying midstakes players play flawless poker

All data is from the past what does that even mean, my data is from 2022 and is very relevant. Nick Howard isn't using 2015 data to teach people.

That 12% figure was from last year so it could be slightly inaccurate but it's probably a decent ball park figure.

Population strategies take years to change not months.