Theory Thread Month One- 3betting

[sauce123]

Should we be 3betting a polarized range or a balanced one?
- Does this change by the position of the opener?
- How much does this depend on the wide/narrowness of our expected calling range for the opponent.
- Does this change if opponent is a fish?
-FWIW, there doesn't seem to be a "right" answer here- if you watch the cardrunners videos it seems aba 3bets a very wide, balanced range, while players like CTS and Jman 3bet a more polarized one. All are very successful doing this at the highest stakes....

More questions to follow and feel free to post your own but this is just to get things started....

[IowaSkinsFan]

"Should we be 3betting a polarized range or a balanced one?"
-I'm big on the polar idea versus opponents with tight calling ranges. There a parts of your game that become exploitable if your being strictly polar. If your strictly polar your opponent may figure out that you're showing up with low cards and draws way more often than high pairs and play accordingly. This is only a minor problem, as we can adjust the same way (although its hard to figure out if our opponent figures it out).
I just hate the idea of threebetting a hand like QTs, KJ, QJs, JTs, KTs in position because they play well in non threebet pots and horrible against opps calling range. If you're OOP though I like threebetting any cards really. I think it gives a really impossible to read factor of your game and opps have to just go by frequency's. If he's not calling loosely though, again I just don't see theoretically how a non polar range is good.

Although I have only talked about calling ranges of opponent, one really REALLY big factor in determining threebet frequency is how much do they give up postflop? If they literally will never fold you need to tighten up your threebet range because all you do is play into their game by having air a lot (theoretically really -EV). IF he is giving up a lot pre and bluffing very little I town the mother fucker! OOP, In pos, it doesnt matter, if he's not going to play against you without a pair he's going to go down hard.

"Why (exactly) does a loose-aggressive style seem to succeed more often as we move up in stakes?"

It's because ultimately we want as much as possible in our range balanced with bluffs or in another way we want the ability to take away the pot at any time without a hand. Ultimately, the better aggressor is going to win. When you aren't in control you are forced to play predicatbly and "counter play" your opponent. What your left with is a gigantic guessing game where you are the one guessing and not your opponent. The only way you're going to beat a more aggressive player than you is if he's bad.

Good players know this, which is why you see a guy like CTS limping his BU to take back aggression in the match (although CTS said in the video to reduce variance, tbh I think that's only part of it).

Take this situation for instance. Opp is threebetting like a monkey and is good hand reader. You raise preflop, opp threebet you call with AA. Flop comes 56K, he leads.

A lot of people tend to call here. But in reality a majority of the time you can't. What if you have 78, air, or another hand and you want to play back? You can raise yes, but good players are going to take you to town light because your range isnt balanced.
You can call, yes, but opp can always take you off your hand with a two barrel. Eventually, you are going to have to RAISE an aggressive player of a hand, and you can't always do it with the essential nuts or your going to get killed. You have to find ways to take control of the match again, or your lines are going to be unbalanced and you're going to suffer.

Which brings me too....

"What frequencies should we be either 4bet/folding or 4bet calling as semibluffs? (pre) "

4 betting/calling is so sick versus light threebetting opponents for a few reasons.
1. By doing so we force our opponent either to widen his calling range with a hand that he'll at best have a 60/40 edge against you post flop. Because if he doesn't, we just forced him to tighten his light threebetting range.
2. We don't have to play without initiative.
3. It takes away position from our opponents.

I think fourbet/folding only have value versus certain opponents really, only the ones who aren't going to widen their fourbet calling (shoving) ranges and are only going in with the super strong hands.


I'm interested in a response from Cocco Bill in this thread because his style is so non aggressive yet he kills the games. I just don't understand how you can do that and win the kind of money he does without sick game selection and really soft websites. You also see guys like ADZ play an incredibly weird passive style HU.

[zook]

I'd like to define the terms first, make sure I have them right.

A balanced 3betting range = a little bit of everything, premiums plus a mixture of medium strength hands (non-ace broadways, suited connectors, medium and low pp's) some percentage of the time (30-40%?) and some crap with modest potential (low sc's, offsuit connectors, suited gappers) some other percentage (10-20%?)

A polarized 3betting range = premiums plus the higher end of the medium strength hands (maybe TT+, AJo+, A9s+?) and some crap with potential (see above) some percentage of the time (20%?)

Am I close?

[sauce123]

yea zook good point we should define

a "polarized" 3betting range is like TT+ AQs+, then a bunch of random ass shit like 54s 42s 76o- varying levels of trash (of course we occasionally will have any two basically if see a good opportunity, its not like we CANT 3bet KJo) The principle is basically we will have hands that are firmly beating our opponents preflop calling range and hands which are pretty far behind our opponent's preflop calling range.

a non polarized 3betting range is just this: if we 3bet approx. 7% of the time say (this is arbitrary) we will be 3betting with about the top 8% of starting hands: say ATs+ AJo+ 88+ KQs KQo or something. Another way to do this is to just 3bet any hand which is beating X% of his opening range (this can+should be adjusted according to our position on the raiser) . This is a concept more like limit holdem imo, as we are pushing a preflop equity advantage even if we may not be ahead of our opponent's 3bet calling range but ahead of his raising range.

ill go into more detail later...

[mixchange]

so the question then to me is while we consider how to act based on opponent or table, polarized or unpolarized ranges, what do we do against unknowns? after 100 hands? When can we meaningfully use our theorem here?

[pocketfours]

If you're OOP though I like threebetting any cards really. I think it gives a really impossible to read factor of your game and opps have to just go by frequency's.

So you are saying that you like to play threebet pots OOP with garbage?

Are you talking HU? I just don't se how frequent threebetting with garbage from the blinds would be very profitable.

[IowaSkinsFan]

If you're OOP though I like threebetting any cards really. I think it gives a really impossible to read factor of your game and opps have to just go by frequency's.

So you are saying that you like to play threebet pots OOP with garbage?

Are you talking HU? I just don't se how frequent threebetting with garbage from the blinds would be very profitable.

Versus the players I play I see a variety of calling ranges in position rather than OOP. I'll see anything from 65s, to QJs, AA, AJ, 55. Really any hand in the spectra. Yet people tend to fold a lot of bad hands they raise to threebets, and some have a passive balanced range rather than having a balance fourbetting range. And still people just hate playing air postflop in threebet pots. Versus these types of players you can really threebet anything.

But if someone is calling a lot and floating and raising a bunch I like to use the reasoning "don't help someone do something wrong." Versus that type of player i'd use a much tighter threebet range.
But since we are seeing hands like QJ, QT, KT being called in pos it allows us to pursue a more balanced threebet range OOP. We can reraise AJ, AT, KQ for value. This helps a lot because if we are a really tight threebettor, mediocore strength hands that need to be isolated for their full value don't play well in a threebet pot because of a tighter calling range from opp.

[IowaSkinsFan]

This is a concept more like limit holdem imo, as we are pushing a preflop equity advantage even if we may not be ahead of our opponent's 3bet calling range but ahead of his raising range.

I don't think this concept applies to no limit. When we threebet pre, considering we are not calling a shove with any hands in question all we need to worry about is how our hand plays against their calling range.

[pocketfours]

Versus the players I play I see a variety of calling ranges in position rather than OOP. I'll see anything from 65s, to QJs, AA, AJ, 55. Really any hand in the spectra. Yet people tend to fold a lot of bad hands they raise to threebets, and some have a passive balanced range rather than having a balance fourbetting range. And still people just hate playing air postflop in threebet pots. Versus these types of players you can really threebet anything.

Ok, but this applies mostly when playing against bad players. We should still remember that this is a high stakes thread and we can't assume that players are going to be that bad. Instead we should assume that players will adapt fast to any style of play. Of course against a certain type of player this can be ok, but overall against decent hs players threebetting light oop is usually -EV.

But if someone is calling a lot and floating and raising a bunch I like to use the reasoning "don't help someone do something wrong."

Don't help?

But since we are seeing hands like QJ, QT, KT being called in pos it allows us to pursue a more balanced threebet range OOP. We can reraise AJ, AT, KQ for value.

AK, AQ, AJ are still a big part of any IP threebet calling range. We are OOP and our range is pretty narrow compared to the IP caller. We are also dead to a fourbet.

[gabe]

non polarized range is alot better against thinking opponents, but that doesnt necessarily mean its better than calling preflop

[pocketfours]

What about threebetting in position? I might have a leak in my full/short game here since I mostly play HU and there is no IP threebetting going on...

Generally we are quite happy just calling and playing a hand IP that crushes the openers range, right? This way the effective stacks are deep and we can force our opponent to make bigger mistakes on later streets.

The reasons of threebetting IP to me seems like:
1. We want to raise at least AA/K K for value and hope to get it in pre
2. We want to isolate the first in raiser
3. We want to squeeze a raiser and a caller
4. We want to force a loose player to fold his hand pre

In addition we want to do something else sometimes to make 1-4 less obvious. Threebetting a polarized range seems clearly better here because when facing a fourbet we are just as dead with KJ as we are with 45s, but against an OOP call, we MUCH rather have 45s, right?

So going polarized IP and balanced OOP seems optimal to me.

Is there something I'm missing about threebetting IP?

[IowaSkinsFan]

Versus the players I play I see a variety of calling ranges in position rather than OOP. I'll see anything from 65s, to QJs, AA, AJ, 55. Really any hand in the spectra. Yet people tend to fold a lot of bad hands they raise to threebets, and some have a passive balanced range rather than having a balance fourbetting range. And still people just hate playing air postflop in threebet pots. Versus these types of players you can really threebet anything.

Ok, but this applies mostly when playing against bad players. We should still remember that this is a high stakes thread and we can't assume that players are going to be that bad. Instead we should assume that players will adapt fast to any style of play. Of course against a certain type of player this can be ok, but overall against decent hs players threebetting light oop is usually -EV.

Got me there, although this logic still holds versus certain types of players.

But if someone is calling a lot and floating and raising a bunch I like to use the reasoning "don't help someone do something wrong."

Don't help?

What I mean if someones going to call all your threebets and not fold postflop the logical counter is to tighten your threebet range pre. Don't help an opponent make his playing style good.

But since we are seeing hands like QJ, QT, KT being called in pos it allows us to pursue a more balanced threebet range OOP. We can reraise AJ, AT, KQ for value.

AK, AQ, AJ are still a big part of any IP threebet calling range. We are OOP and our range is pretty narrow compared to the IP caller. We are also dead to a fourbet.

I don't really understand your point, are you suggesting we don't threebet AJ, AT, KQ from the blinds to CO and BU raises a good amount of the time? (Clearly there's a lot of value in calling these hands)

non polarized range is alot better against thinking opponents, but that doesnt necessarily mean its better than calling preflop

agreed, which is why I hate threebetting hands like JTs, QJ, etc. most of the time.

[IowaSkinsFan]

So going polarized IP and balanced OOP seems optimal to me.

I've come to a similar conclusion most of the time. But you do face opponents who like to call threebets OOP like it's their job.

[crazycrazy]

if u want to 3bet then u either have to have a hand or you want to get into +ev preflop or on the flop no matter what falls and to do that u have to...
1.figure out what is he playing and how he reacts to pre 3bets
2.figure out his flop play and cbet reactions/tendencies
3. put him on opening range in current situation
4.is ur folding equity good enough to 3bet with any two ? then u dont need range.
4b. if isnt then u shuold 3 bet premium and good speculative hands with which u can +ev shove the flop. or simply adjust ur range to hands he'll pay u off with and u have odds to play
5. figure out how he figures out ur range - then fake it.
6. turn off ur hud and use his hud against him.
7. 3bet his cbets light on certain flops if he loves to fold (in non 3bet pots) but its still 3beting so i mention it
8. if ur short half or 100b deep changes ur and his range quite a lot
9. air is +ev

[sauce123]

ok, heres an example: 18/15 raises UTG, we are dealt QQ in the CO- what's our best action?

in the BB? Does it change with JJ, TT, AQo, AQs or 54s?

Does it change if UTG+1 calls?

[badgers]

So going polarized IP and balanced OOP seems optimal to me.

I've come to a similar conclusion most of the time. But you do face opponents who like to call threebets OOP like it's their job.

Isn't that a good thing? Or do you mean that it should be balance IP against these opps?

Thread is over my head though, remind me to wait a while before venturing here again

[IowaSkinsFan]

ok, heres an example: 18/15 raises UTG, we are dealt QQ in the CO- what's our best action?

in the BB? Does it change with JJ, TT, AQo, AQs or 54s?

Does it change if UTG+1 calls?

It seems like versus and 18/15 UTG we should be calling a lot. UTG raisers just aren't going to call threebets light, they don't need to because they aren''t raising loosely UTG. I like threebetting UTG raisers light, but super polarized.

In the BB, I threebet all three of those hands most of the time.

[pocketfours]

What I mean if someones going to call all your threebets and not fold
postflop the logical counter is to tighten your threebet range pre.
Don't help an opponent make his playing style good.

Yes I got your point. The way you wrote it sounded like you DO want to
help your opponent... Forget my comment.

I don't really understand your point, are you suggesting we don't
threebet AJ, AT, KQ from the blinds to CO and BU raises a good amount of
the time? (Clearly there's a lot of value in calling these hands)

Nah, more like we usually don't threebet those hands against early
openers, even if we assume that they would call with QJ,QT or KJ...
Against late openers threebetting AJ/KQ is obv std no matter what their
calling range is.

[crazycrazy]

Isn't that a good thing? Or do you mean that it should be balance IP against these opps?

Thread is over my head though, remind me to wait a while before venturing here again

its good when u have a hand. when u dont u want him to fold. if he dont then u want to hit good (set/big draw or something good with sc). if u hit nothing u want him to fol to ur cbet. or u wnt to play some poker with him post flop and bluff him off. if he is so light in calling then its better to adjust ur 3etting and post flop plan against him.in fact ppl who call light and are capable of raising ur flop cbets, shoving big draws with good outs and fe are very hard to deal with. u have to adjust ur ranges against them alot.

[sauce123]

its good when u have a hand... alot.

agreed

[Renton]

vs ppl who call a lot obviously its better to only 3bet hands that hit flops, like KJ/AT and stuff, basically 3betting anything that is ahead of their opening range and plays reasonably well vs their calling range.

vs ppl who stay in line, its better to 3bet QQ+AK maybe AQ and a bunch of trash.

[wufwugy]

Excluding monsters, 3betting seems to have as much to do with flow of game/opposition as do hole cards.

Always raise monsters, never call garbage, sometimes raise sometimes call the in betweens.

[minSim]

I thought this article covered some good thoughts and numbers. The writer talks about tournaments mostly, but the concepts are for cash games as well. I hope it brings input for some more discussion on the topic:

http://www.pocketfives.com/41754882-...24903E3DB.aspx