This is a hand from my sweat session with PPP last night. Interested in some thoughts on this.


Game is 200nl, villain is 24/21/9 over 185 hands with an ATSB of 28%

Pre flop I think is very debatable. BB is 36/20/2. We don't close out the betting which kinda sucks I guess looking back at it now but I had no read that BB was the type to squeeze without a legit hand.

In general people always talk about 3bet or fold from the blinds but I don't think this is necessarily true. I'm a big advocator of playing pots in position but in this spot here I know my hand plays excellently against his range and I'm experimenting with occasionally calling with these types of hands.

I'd like to hear people's thoughts on the 3bet/fold rule and in what circumstances people think it can be broken (if any).

On the flop we can take any line we want here I think. Check/call, check/raise and bet/3bet shove are all arguable plays, what line do you prefer and why?

On the turn what is your plan? Bet enough to committ yourself to calling a shove? Check/fold? Check/call? Bet smaller and fold to a shove?

BossMedia Game #1000637548: Table Table TH 262 - $1.00/$2.00 - No Limit Hold'em - 23:03:45 - 2008/03/17
Seat 1: grtcllr ($51.55)
Seat 2: Hero ($203.15)
Seat 3: Mikado! ($339.90)
Seat 4: nytkeittää ($206.30)
Seat 5: _TY4$_ ($725.96)
Mikado! posts the big blind of $2.00
Hero posts the small blind of $1.00
grtcllr is the button
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [ ]
nytkeittää folds
_TY4$_ raises $8.00
grtcllr folds
Hero calls $8.00
Mikado! folds
*** FLOP *** [ ] - pot $16
Hero checks
_TY4$_ bets $12.00
Hero raises $40.00
_TY4$_ calls $40.00
*** TURN *** [ ] [] - pot $95, effective stacks remaining $155
Hero ???

According to pokerstove, this is 21% pf

66+,A4s+,K7s+,Q9s+,J9s+,T9s,A9o+,KTo+,QTo+,JTo

Now i'm going to knock it down to what i think would bet and call your raise here, tell me if you disagree with my thinking.

A4s+,910s,66+

Now putting your hand up till the turn into pokerstove
equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 26.023% 26.02% 00.00% 687 0.00 { KcJc }
Hand 1: 73.977% 73.98% 00.00% 1953 0.00 { 66+, AQs, ATs-A9s, A7s-A6s, A4s, T9s }

Now things that could change this are if you've been increasingly aggro on the flop, I generally just call and reevaluate on the turn based on card/betting.

In the end though, i end up check/folding here most of the time as calling any bet you're just hoping for a club the majority of the time and that might not even be good.

Got a home game tonight but I'll be back on later or first thing tomorrow to hopefully see some discussion and get more involved myself.

Here's my personnal take on this. (I think this is the kind of stuff that we can actullay discuss and see lots of interesting point of views).

I don't like reraising preflop here out of position. I don't want to give him a chance to reraise here (or the other blind) and I have to fold ex : reraise to 24$, and he moves in or repops it. He has the stack for it. If I just call, the BB might just call also, which I think is ok playing a 3 way pot with a drawing hand here.

Fact is, BB folded. My play here would of been call the 8$ pf.

Now on the flop, out of position, I would of just check / call a small bet / fold to a sizable bet. If I was in position, I might consider a raise here like you did to 40$, and probably on the turn, he would of check I and check behind for a free card. If he bets out strongly on the turn again, I have to probably give up the hand. Pretty much abc in position. BUT (here's the but part), in this situation in position, I would just call a bet if reasonable on the flop. Why ? Stack size. I'm not going to scare him of anything (say 10-10, 99). He's so deep that he can afford to call a wider range IMO and is not afraid to lose with say 99.

In your situation, it'S pretty much (for me) check/call small bet on the flop. Check turn / call small bet on the turn (say 16$) / check / fold river, bet out strong if hit flush.


Here we checkraised flop, he called, now I think we got to give up if he bets. Again, same argument, if we go all in, he can call with a wider range because of his huge stack and we basically have to hit the flush probably to win. At best we have 15 outs on the river and I think it's a bad idea going broke with a flush draw.

I 3bet this as standard pf. We're way ahead of his raising range and I like to take the lead in the pot. I don't think calling is terrible, folding is too nitty though. I think calling sometimes is fine cos we can't always be 3betting everything when he raises pre, it's just asking for huge pots. It's good to merge your range enough that he can't be sure what you are 3betting and what you are calling with.

Against that villain as played I much prefer c/r on the flop but that's just personal preference, I don't tend to lead flops as much as I maybe should. I would c/r a set or 69 etc. there so would do it with the big draw as well.

Turn I'm betting and committing to calling a shove. We should have a ton of fold equity and plenty of outs if it all goes tits up.

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Whilst his PFR is 21% it's the ATSB% stat that is more relevant here, 28%.

PokerStove shows that as 55+/A2s+/A7o+/K5s+/K9o+/Q7s+/Q9o+/J8s+/J9o+/T8s+

So it's a wide range and we are a favourite against that range

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

558,211,104 games 0.063 secs 8,860,493,714 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 48.349% 46.24% 02.11% 258120265 11770768.00 { 55+, A2s+, K5s+, Q7s+, J8s+, T8s+, 98s, A7o+, K9o+, Q9o+, J9o+ }
Hand 1: 51.651% 49.54% 02.11% 276549303 11770768.00 { KcJc }

My thinking for what he'd call the 3bet with is 99+/AJs+/AQo+/KQ/JTs (just chucked this in because occasionally he'll call with a speculative hand to try and outplay me in position

Against this range we are:
Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

130,135,104 games 0.005 secs 26,027,020,800 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 35.007% 34.24% 00.76% 44561483 994715.00 { KcJc }
Hand 1: 64.993% 64.23% 00.76% 83584191 994715.00 { 99+, AJs+, KQs, JTs, AQo+, KQo }

Obviously just the PokerStove numbers aren't enough because we have to face post flop decisions.

If he is opening 28% of hands and calling a 3bet with 6.9% of hands that means that he folds approx 75% of the time. So assuming BB always folds we make $11 75% of the time. Assuming we 3bet to $28 we show an immediate profit of:

(0.75 * $11) - (0.25 * $27) = $1.50

and this assumes we always lose when called (obv not going to be the case)

I am really tired so if my maths is wrong or my logic then please say.

When we weigh in that Button's range for calling the 3bet could well be wider and BB will sometimes have a monster 3betting becomes even more marginal EV and the fact we are left OOP when called means I quite like just calling the 3bet.

If we are going to 3 betting a lot then I see David's point of merging our range but I personally prefer my range to be complete air and monsters.


misterx I think you're reading too much in to his stack size. It is only effective size that really matters which is $200 since that is all he can force me to have to call. You could argue he may be more liberal with his stack because he's clearly up for the session and running hot may make him try more moves but I don't know how material this is.

On the flop I don't like check/folding to a sizeable bet because we have a ton of equity against his range:

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

299,970 games 0.047 secs 6,382,340 games/sec

Board: 8c 5c 7h
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 59.546% 57.79% 01.76% 173353 5268.50 { KcJc }
Hand 1: 40.454% 38.70% 01.76% 116080 5268.50 { 55+, A2s+, K5s+, Q7s+, J8s+, T8s+, 98s, A7o+, K9o+, Q9o+, J9o+ }


If we consider what I would perceive to be his range for stacking off our equity is:

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

45,540 games 0.005 secs 9,108,000 games/sec

Board: 8c 5c 7h
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 41.954% 41.22% 00.73% 18773 333.00 { KcJc }
Hand 1: 58.046% 57.31% 00.73% 26101 333.00 { 55+, AcQc }


So still not too bad. If we check raise to $40 and he shoves we are left having to call $152 in to a pot of $248 and will need 38% equity. So it is slightly +EV to check/raise/call.

I wonder if bet/3bet shove gives us more value though from the fold equity we gain. Maybe someone else would like to do a calc for this?

That's enough ramblings for now, hopefully someone will have comments about this post and have more to add on top.

Keep up the discussion guys!

The reason I prefer to merge my pf range rather than polarise it is with a polarised preflop range a villain can proceed fairly correctly postflop. When it's merged you put him in tough spots as you can realistically hit any kind of flop in almost any way and that can justify calling flops or c/r or whatever. Sometimes if your range is polarised you will get a ton of action just cos he's gonna be thinking that you can't have a monster "that" often, that's obv great if you have a hand, but you won't very much of the time.

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Both ranges hit the same number of flops imo. Granted some greater than others. When we are 3betting with KJs we are bluffing, the hand just seems too good to me for this.

A thinking villain will be able to adjust to us if he knows we are 3betting hands like KJs just as he can if he knows we sometimes have 7 high. With 7 high we never end up stacking off light, with KJs we can get in to some pretty sick spots.

I don't think it's bluffing as such, we're definitely ahead of his raising range. I just think playing too many pots OOP against a LAG while giving him the lead in the hand is never going to be pretty.

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I have to recommend Cardrunners for superb poker coaching. It was honestly the single biggest improvement in my game signing up there! Sign-up fee might seem steep, but it pays itself back within weeks.

Yeah in general I'm trying calling with these hands more in position i.e. BTN v CO than in the blinds v BTN. Before I would usually just auto 3bet them BTN v CO.

This just happens to be an example of me being OOP. I think it makes it more interesting for the post flop discussion