adjusting to blind 3bets when stealing a lot more

hey,

not looking for a magic answer or anything here but some advice on how i can figure out what to do myself and my game.

basically over the last couple months ive opened up quite a bit more from CO/BTN and stealing a pretty good amount, trying to play a lot more pots in position mostly..

in any case i'm getting 3bet a lot from the blinds mostly from looser/laggier/aggro opponents, the 19/15 type guys seem to be mostly leaving me alone which is fine.

the end result is basically this: i'm folding to 3bets closer to 75% these days with some days / sessions over 80% even.
the simple solution is to leave tables where this happens or just get super tight from these spots, but id rather figure out how i can adjust in a better way to these guys since i have position on them.

i'm just not sure where to start with my process, i'm just frustrated that i'm getting so hammered on and not sure what to do about it

How big are you opening from the BU when you have active blinds? Obviously 2.5x'ing or even minraising is best when we have very active blinds. This gives us higher implied odds when villain 3bets (especially if he can't size well).

Also, it's crazy how much it helps to play around with Pokerstove in spots like these. It's pretty simple (especially for somebody of your skill level) to create a range that we can 1) value 4b; 2) bluff 4b; 3) flat; in this spot. Hands that flop us a lot of equity gives us the ability to maintain aggression against villain (and we can call these hands a lot more since we're gonna start raising the button even smaller). A lot of villains cbet too much (and too large) which makes it quite profitable for us to try and take the pot away on the flop. Think of it as "floating" preflop, I guess.

I'm not sure how much that helped since you probably heard this all before. Either way, I'd be interested in responses from others about this spot.

Really depends on their tendencies.

If they are gonna 3bet you light and 5bet jam on you light, you can widen your 4bet value range.

If they are gonna 3bet you light and fold to your 4bets, you can 4bet bluff them more, and flat strong hands like AA/KK and let them spew into you post.

One thing I try to hammer into my head is that we can keep folding to their 3bets over and over, and in general if we 4bet them and take it down one out of 4 times, then we're still breaking even. Even though it feels like we're getting run over.

yea this is part of what is bugging me a bit too, just sucks to get run over so much, but when i'm raising to $5 (2.5x) on BTN i'm risking $5 to win $3 effectively, and almost all combinations of blind regs are going to have roughly 80% folds from SB / BB which means 64% of the time they fold to the steal so we're already at breakeven or higher even if we fold to EVERY SINGLE 3bet right?

Originally Posted by bspahn

yea this is part of what is bugging me a bit too, just sucks to get run over so much, but when i'm raising to $5 (2.5x) on BTN i'm risking $5 to win $3 effectively, and almost all combinations of blind regs are going to have roughly 80% folds from SB / BB which means 64% of the time they fold to the steal so we're already at breakeven or higher even if we fold to EVERY SINGLE 3bet right?

If this is true then yes, you'd be profiting regardless of folding to all of their 3bets. Though I'd say on avg regs folding 80% is somewhat high, but its possible. They are definitely folding less as you move up, and when they notice you have a high fold to 3bet, they will 3bet you much more than they 3bet other ppl.

drop some of the hands from the bottom end of your stealing range and then defend wider.

idk what stakes you are playing but if its 200nl+ i really doubt you are getting 80% folds from most regs (from the big blind at least, I suppose the SB will fold quite often though regardless) especially if you have a loose image from later position.

once you show people you just aren't folding to their 3bets they usually fuck off unless they really want to go to war oop and that's when you can just start opening even wider.

so i like the approach up throwing away the worst opening hands from CO and BTN when the blinds could fight back relatively light, that's pretty easy to do...

defending wider seems a lot more complex to me.

let's look at 4bet/stacking off
if we assume our standard vs blinds is JJ+/AK then we can fairly easily add in TT and AQ probably

this leads to an issue though, against these types of guys who are 3betting around 10% or a bit more against steals, our 88/99 type hands are pretty strong but I can't really see 4bet/stacking off being good but flatting isn't good either because most boards will be terrible and we end up folding on the flop and we hardly ever can stand any barrels with them... do we just not worry bout middle pairs and ditch them?

probably the most difficult thing is defending by calling, i just have a really hard time figuring out what hands are good to call with.
i mean as already said calling with mid pairs is really difficult imo
then theres suited broadways, but say we flats TJs or QJs, i mean they are just so easily dominated, so if we flop top pair do we start to fold to turn barrels???
and what about lower sc's, say i have 78s I mean sure i can call but its probably -ev because we lack initiative and frankly these hands dont really connect in a super awesome way very often.

as you can see this is a huge struggle for me, so is there any simple approach to this or basically not at all and it's all dependent on reads, previous history etc...

Originally Posted by bspahn

so i like the approach up throwing away the worst opening hands from CO and BTN when the blinds could fight back relatively light, that's pretty easy to do...

I think people get confused when how to adjust to someone playing aggressively to your bets/opens/raises. You do not necessarily want to start folding more, in fact, I am betting with two regs in the blinds you're still going to want to open a very high frequency. You do not want to fold a +EV open as an adjustment. Sometimes someone is 3betting or calling so loose that a hand like 96s becomes a -EV open.

The best and simplest answer is to 4bet a wider value range with some/many bluffs thrown in. I wouldn't go further than AJs+, 88+, if even that far. You also widen your calling range down the ladder such as KJs/QJs/JTs/ATs/A9s type hands depending on how wide they are 3betting. There is no reason to freak if someone is 3betting a lot. Most players at your stakes when 3betting light are going to make large mistakes postflop and basically you just need to find the exploitable lines.