Playing the blinds with a good (but not great) hand

I don't agree with leading being bad. I think its perfectly fine in any spot where you want to see the turn for w/e reason (i.e. you have a lot of backdoor draws), but don't believe a c/r is profitable, and don't want to c/f. I think its also often the optimal play with weak flush draws and gutters, because you don't really want to c/r them, but you don't want to c/c and face barrels either. By donking flop and turn you get essentially free cards and two chances to take the pot down, instead of having to c/c c/f and having little chance to win the pot. It's also pretty easy to balance too because there aren't a ton of combos of such hands.


One thing I wanted to clarify in pelions original post is that its not so important that the c) hands be "more profitable" calling. They only need to be profitable, period. Everytime you 3-bet a call hand, it takes up a combo slot in your 3-bet bluff range that could have been otherwise occupied by a crappy hand you are now folding.

Originally Posted by Renton

One thing I wanted to clarify in pelions original post is that its not so important that the c) hands be "more profitable" calling. They only need to be profitable, period. Everytime you 3-bet a call hand, it takes up a combo slot in your 3-bet bluff range that could have been otherwise occupied by a crappy hand you are now folding.

This kind of comment inevitably leads to the standard debate, "is it better to 3bet KJo or T4ss?"