any advice on playin 3bet pots?

[Zaixer]

last few days i have lost a bunch of buyins in pots that i have reraised.

almost every hand have been something like this: i reraise 4x villains raise with a good hand (AKo,AQs,JJ). dont hit anything on the flop, cbet ~2/3 pot and get minreraised.

[Galapogos]

Could be varience. Do you know the stats of the players you're reraising preflop? What's the lowest PFR stat. you 3-bet?

[Vi-Zer0Skill]

i generally avoid 3betting players without a strong hand if their PFR is <10%.


If a player is 65/40, i personally prefer to call preflop more so than raise. These players typically don't fold a flop if it hits them in some way and so you aren't going to win a lot of RR pots since these players don't like to fold. I would appreciate hearing other ideas on how to play these types of players if anyone has suggestions.

Against a 25/20, for example, i would 3bet a lot of SC's and pocket pairs. They have good equity against this players opening range (when you add J-J+/A-K to your range) and also are easy to play postflop (typically a PP or a SC is a hit/miss type of hand).

So my advice is to generally avoid 3betting players who are very loose/ very tight. They are poor 3bet candidates since they don't like to fold/tend to have a legitimate hand.

The best players to 3bet are those who raise a reasonable amount but also raise a lot of hands that can't stand a preflop reraise (K-J, A-7 types of hands). And even when they call with them they are too passive with them postflop (c/f often).


Reads are also important. If a player is regularly folding in RR pots where he has called PF, you want to be targetting him. Conversely if someone is never folding in RR pots you don't want to go after him unless you have a strong hand.

[griffey24]

i generally avoid 3betting players without a strong hand if their PFR is <10%.


If a player is 65/40, i personally prefer to call preflop more so than raise. These players typically don't fold a flop if it hits them in some way and so you aren't going to win a lot of RR pots since these players don't like to fold. I would appreciate hearing other ideas on how to play these types of players if anyone has suggestions.

Against a 25/20, for example, i would 3bet a lot of SC's and pocket pairs. They have good equity against this players opening range (when you add J-J+/A-K to your range) and also are easy to play postflop (typically a PP or a SC is a hit/miss type of hand).

So my advice is to generally avoid 3betting players who are very loose/ very tight. They are poor 3bet candidates since they don't like to fold/tend to have a legitimate hand.

The best players to 3bet are those who raise a reasonable amount but also raise a lot of hands that can't stand a preflop reraise (K-J, A-7 types of hands). And even when they call with them they are too passive with them postflop (c/f often).


Reads are also important. If a player is regularly folding in RR pots where he has called PF, you want to be targetting him. Conversely if someone is never folding in RR pots you don't want to go after him unless you have a strong hand.

This is a really good post, and I think it definitely points out what of my major flaws. I seem to 3-bet more based on what my cards are, as opposed to paying very close attention to who is raising first.

Also, I have been 3-betting players like 65/40's a LOT simply based on "my hand must be way better than their range".. but now that i think about it. You're right, I might lose quite a bit of money doing so with AK/AQ type hands, if I don't hit and they never fold.

[Rondavu]

65/40 is a preflop indication. You play hands differently against different 65/40's with different postflop tendancies.

[IowaSkinsFan]

Very good posgt Vi-Zeroskill, except i have one argument.

Very loose players are bad to threebet argument is interesting. In general, I feel the problem may be moreso people just tend to cbet way too much into them. If they're going to call reraises with JT, we are ahead preflop with almost any hand we reraise. Although, the problem is we've just made the pot must bigger and by loosenning up are range we've done two things.
1. We inflate the pot, which actually allows our opponent to play better since decisions are easier in bigger pots, while in smaller pots were allowing him to make more mistakes since the pot will be played on three streets.
2. We make how he will play hands naturally a better move. Loose players will likely call a flop bet with any pair. Normally, the way they play it the rest of the way will become a gigantic mistake, but in threebet pots if we dont hit their pairs are often good, while if our threebet range is tight, calling with any pair is horrid.

But then again, if opponents are calling with such bad hands and is willing to put more money in with them that definetely would warrant reraising.

[Vi-Zer0Skill]

Very good posgt Vi-Zeroskill, except i have one argument.

Very loose players are bad to threebet argument is interesting. In general, I feel the problem may be moreso people just tend to cbet way too much into them. If they're going to call reraises with JT, we are ahead preflop with almost any hand we reraise. Although, the problem is we've just made the pot must bigger and by loosenning up are range we've done two things.
1. We inflate the pot, which actually allows our opponent to play better since decisions are easier in bigger pots, while in smaller pots were allowing him to make more mistakes since the pot will be played on three streets.
2. We make how he will play hands naturally a better move. Loose players will likely call a flop bet with any pair. Normally, the way they play it the rest of the way will become a gigantic mistake, but in threebet pots if we dont hit their pairs are often good, while if our threebet range is tight, calling with any pair is horrid.

But then again, if opponents are calling with such bad hands and is willing to put more money in with them that definetely would warrant reraising.

Initially, i was definitely c-betting into very loose players. Once my c-bets got floated 4-5 times i started to catch on...

Point 1 is very good. At the time i wrote my reply i was only thinking of how i had ran into some extreme LAGG players and found 3betting lightly to be ineffective.

Point 2 is essentially what i was thinking; you did word it a bit more like i would expect to find it in a theory book.

I don't really understand the last thing you wrote, but i think you are implying we still should be 3betting these players frequently. I think an optimal 3bet range against a very loose LAGG would be A-Q/K-Q/9-9+. This way we do end up holding a pair more often than SC's/missed overs, and villain still wants to call lightly on flops since we are 3betting somewhat frequently (if he is a weak 65/40 - as he probably is - he probably won't even notice we are 3betting tighter). I hope we get more discussion on an optimal 3bet range against someone who does not fold weak/medium strength hands postflop.