Theoretical question

[IowaSkinsFan]

You are HU against an opponent at 1/2. This opponent is threebetting about 20% of your BU raises. He is also cbetting the flop everytime 3/4ths pot, besides completely ridiculous (ie 7s6s5s) flops.

You are opening about 80% of your hands. You decide that you are going to mostly call is raises with your range to exploit his large cbet%.

You think opp is generally not that good on the turn and river. He is not aggro enough, doesn't thin vbet too well, and is somewhat straight forward. He's not horrendous, but not that great.

Which is the better way to play your preflop threebet calling range.

A. Mostly use a balanced, on the aggro side, raise cbet range.

B. Mostly call flop and have balanced aggression on later streets.

Please include why. There is way more than one factor people should be arguing about.

[griffey24]

I think the main part of my answer to this is going to be based on "you think opp is generally not that good on the turn and river. He is not aggro enough, doesn't thin vbet too well, and is somewhat straight forward."

If he's not good on turn and river and pretty straight forward, then I choose option B.

C/C flop and re-evaluate turn. If he's not that good on later streets then he's not that difficult to play OOP and I'm pretty comfortable just check calling these guys down.

If he's going to shutdown often on turn and rivers then choosing option A means we are just getting our shove called when he has us beat, but everything that folds would have given up on later streets in option B anyhow.

I also don't mind c/c flop and donk leading some turns if he's not tricky enough to raise us off our mediocre hands. (donk lead would be for value, and to charge any draws or overcards)

[IowaSkinsFan]

I think the main part of my answer to this is going to be based on "you think opp is generally not that good on the turn and river. He is not aggro enough, doesn't thin vbet too well, and is somewhat straight forward."

If he's not good on turn and river and pretty straight forward, then I choose option B.

C/C flop and re-evaluate turn. If he's not that good on later streets then he's not that difficult to play OOP and I'm pretty comfortable just check calling these guys down.

If he's going to shutdown often on turn and rivers then choosing option A means we are just getting our shove called when he has us beat, but everything that folds would have given up on later streets in option B anyhow.

I also don't mind c/c flop and donk leading some turns if he's not tricky enough to raise us off our mediocre hands. (donk lead would be for value, and to charge any draws or overcards)

Solid points, although for the sake of it not being a one sided argument I'm going to say I think Option A is the better option.

[cjs55]

Thinking about why A would be better...

Maybe because it allows him to make big mistakes in bigger pots on the turn/river? That doesn't really make sense unless you're deep. Or because the value of raising someone with such an exploitable cbet strategy overwhelms the value of going to the turn/river often against him?

[griffey24]

I mean this really depends on frequencies.

If we always c/c our hands with SD value, then its hard for us to bluff. Floating OOP, hoping for a turn check through so we can bluff river is kind of difficult and prob not a good play.

If we pick A, at least we can shove flop with our hands/bluffs and draws. Choosing B, if he's good at picking up on reads/patterns, he might recognize that our flop c/r are primarily draws/bluffs as opposed to real hands.

Also its probably important to know: How tight he's folding to c/r on flops (to bluff more) or how light he's calling c/r on flops (to value bet wider)

[mcatdog]

Cool thread. First of all, Griffey, we're talking about when we have the button so check-raises don't apply here.

I'm definitely raising because when someone is putting in that much money that often with nothing, you want to be able to take it sometimes even when you have a hand that won't win at showdown.

As for Griffey's point about how tight he's playing vs. flop raises, I feel like we should either be bluff-raising a ton or else we should be raise-calling stuff as weak as second pair. I haven't done any actual math but my feeling is that when he's 3-betting that wide and c-betting every time, at least one of those two strategies is guaranteed to be super profitable vs him for 100 BB.

[cjs55]

I'm definitely raising because when someone is putting in that much money that often with nothing, you want to be able to take it sometimes even when you have a hand that won't win at showdown.

Why not just wait until the turn to do this? Seems like we get more information that way. Not to mention it allows us to see free rivers if we feel like it and allows him to make bigger mistakes on later streets (which he isn't good at playing). And we get to raise the turn all in if we have a good hand which is a nice weapon.

I suppose he might call down with weak value that he wouldn't if you raised flop...or would he? I'd imagine someone who is cbetting every flop is going to be forced into calling quite a few raises.

[IowaSkinsFan]

100bb deep btw sorry.

[thizzSantaCruz]

In HU I normally favor a very aggresive flop game but in this situation floating a large percentage of the time seems like a better idea.

Having position here is huge, we can dictate the size of the pot. If he is 3 betting 20% of his range and cbetting constantly he is going to have bloated pots with marginal hands a vast majority of the time. Since he does not thin v-bet well we only have to figure out how often he bluffs.

Raising draws will still be very profitable on the flop because that's where we will have the most equity.

[pocketfours]

I think this decision should be based mostly on gameflow.

[gabe]

id just be shoving alot of flops