For once I won't bore people with a discussion
of a specific hand and would instead like to bore people by discussing the practice of preflop
3-betting, or re-raising the initial preflop raiser. Before I do so, please note that I don't pretend to be the originator of any of these ideas and you could probably find a more sophisticated explanation elsewhere, so...thanks for reading anyway. :p
Why We 3-Bet
We generally want to 3-bet our opponents for one or more of five reasons:
1) To get value from worse hands when we have a strong hand.
2) To steal money from players who fold often to 3-bets.
3) To discourage players from stealing our blinds or button.
4) To take the betting lead or "initiative" in the hand, which allows us to represent a stronger hand on the flop and continue applying pressure.
5) For "balance," i.e. to show that we can raise without a big hand so that our bigger hands can get paid off and it's more difficult for our opponents to read us.
For obvious reasons, if we're holding a premium hand like AA it makes sense to raise to get more money in the pot with the best hand. While it's sometimes appropriate to just flat call with a big hand, the notion of "not wanting to scare away hands" is misguided and misses the main purpose of raising--to indicate a big hand. If a player only flat calls with big hands and raises everything else, they are playing an extremely exploitable game, as it allows observant opponents to effectively take premium hands out of their range when they raise.
Regarding #2 and #3, if a player raises frequently and folds to a sufficient percentage of 3-bets, our 3-bet is immediately a profitable play, not factoring in any subsequent action if our opponent calls. Our formula for determining profitability should look something like this:
(size of the pot)*(frequency with which opponent folds) - (size of our raise)*(frequency with which opponent calls)
So let's say we're playing $.50/$1.00 and are in the big blind and it folds around to the button, who raises to $3 and the small blind folds. Let's say we know that our opponent folds to 3-bets 65%
of the time. We're holding any two cards in the big blind and are trying to decide if it's profitable to 3-bet. If we make a standard 3-bet to $9, the size of the pot is $4.50 due to the blinds (including ours) and the size of the raise is $8 (because our $1 blind is considered part of the pot). So let's plug that information in to see the expected value from our play:
($4.50)*(.65) - ($8)*(.35)
$2.925 - $2.80
EV = $0.13
Looked at another way, if we want to discover how often the opponent needs to fold for it to be a break even play, we can set it up like this (sorry if my rudimentary math is off):
4.5x = 8
x = 1.7777778
1.778 / 2.778 = .64
In other words, given the scenario above the button needs to fold 1.778 times for every one time he or she calls, or 64% of the time in order for the 3-bet to be profitable by itself.
If we're playing live or playing on Bovada (as I do), there's no access to real-time stats. Instead, it's necessary to estimate the likelihood of a fold based on our image and the villain's tendencies. If a player likes to steal from the button, but has to worry about being 3-bet frequently from the big blind, they'll be less likely to attempt future steals and we're in effect protecting our blind now and later. Finally, for the same reason that we want to raise our big hands (to get value), we need to 3-bet at least some weaker hands so that our opponent can't put us on an an extremely narrow range when we do.
3-Betting Range
I won't argue that there is an ideal 3-betting range because that depends on the type of player one is as well as opponent skill and table dynamics. That said, I can use my own limited data set to illustrate how one might look at a 3-betting range. Over a sample size of about 15.5k hands at $.50/$1.00, I'm 3-betting 6.91% of the time that I have the option. That doesn't sound like a lot, but using Equilab I can get a good idea of exactly which hands I'm 3-betting:
If I were player who hand an extremely narrow 3-bet range of QQ+ and AK that would represent only 2.56% of all potential hands. Instead, my 3-betting range looks something like this:
Raising for value almost all of the time: AA, KK, QQ, AK
Raising for value the majority of the time: AQ, JJ
Sometimes raising for value: AJ, KQ, TT (and occasionally 99, and AT)
Raising as a bluff: QJ, JT, T9, 98, and some other connectors and gappers (e.g. 97) depending on how likely my opponent is to fold.
That doesn't mean I'm always 3-betting hands like JT and 98--against some players I'd do it frequently and against others I never would.
While it's certainly feasible to 3-bet a much wider range than this, given the generally low quality of play on Bovada and the fact that players are random and there's therefore no "history" that can exist between players, this is about as wide a range as I see being necessary. Regardless of where you're playing, if you can find the right circumstances and know your opponents and your own image, expanding your 3-betting range can be an important change to your game and new source of profit.
In a subsequent post, I'll talk a bit more about looking for ways to improve our 3-betting hand selection and identifying possible leaks.
Why We 3-Bet
We generally want to 3-bet our opponents for one or more of five reasons:
1) To get value from worse hands when we have a strong hand.
2) To steal money from players who fold often to 3-bets.
3) To discourage players from stealing our blinds or button.
4) To take the betting lead or "initiative" in the hand, which allows us to represent a stronger hand on the flop and continue applying pressure.
5) For "balance," i.e. to show that we can raise without a big hand so that our bigger hands can get paid off and it's more difficult for our opponents to read us.
For obvious reasons, if we're holding a premium hand like AA it makes sense to raise to get more money in the pot with the best hand. While it's sometimes appropriate to just flat call with a big hand, the notion of "not wanting to scare away hands" is misguided and misses the main purpose of raising--to indicate a big hand. If a player only flat calls with big hands and raises everything else, they are playing an extremely exploitable game, as it allows observant opponents to effectively take premium hands out of their range when they raise.
Regarding #2 and #3, if a player raises frequently and folds to a sufficient percentage of 3-bets, our 3-bet is immediately a profitable play, not factoring in any subsequent action if our opponent calls. Our formula for determining profitability should look something like this:
(size of the pot)*(frequency with which opponent folds) - (size of our raise)*(frequency with which opponent calls)
So let's say we're playing $.50/$1.00 and are in the big blind and it folds around to the button, who raises to $3 and the small blind folds. Let's say we know that our opponent folds to 3-bets 65%
of the time. We're holding any two cards in the big blind and are trying to decide if it's profitable to 3-bet. If we make a standard 3-bet to $9, the size of the pot is $4.50 due to the blinds (including ours) and the size of the raise is $8 (because our $1 blind is considered part of the pot). So let's plug that information in to see the expected value from our play:
($4.50)*(.65) - ($8)*(.35)
$2.925 - $2.80
EV = $0.13
Looked at another way, if we want to discover how often the opponent needs to fold for it to be a break even play, we can set it up like this (sorry if my rudimentary math is off):
4.5x = 8
x = 1.7777778
1.778 / 2.778 = .64
In other words, given the scenario above the button needs to fold 1.778 times for every one time he or she calls, or 64% of the time in order for the 3-bet to be profitable by itself.
If we're playing live or playing on Bovada (as I do), there's no access to real-time stats. Instead, it's necessary to estimate the likelihood of a fold based on our image and the villain's tendencies. If a player likes to steal from the button, but has to worry about being 3-bet frequently from the big blind, they'll be less likely to attempt future steals and we're in effect protecting our blind now and later. Finally, for the same reason that we want to raise our big hands (to get value), we need to 3-bet at least some weaker hands so that our opponent can't put us on an an extremely narrow range when we do.
3-Betting Range
I won't argue that there is an ideal 3-betting range because that depends on the type of player one is as well as opponent skill and table dynamics. That said, I can use my own limited data set to illustrate how one might look at a 3-betting range. Over a sample size of about 15.5k hands at $.50/$1.00, I'm 3-betting 6.91% of the time that I have the option. That doesn't sound like a lot, but using Equilab I can get a good idea of exactly which hands I'm 3-betting:
If I were player who hand an extremely narrow 3-bet range of QQ+ and AK that would represent only 2.56% of all potential hands. Instead, my 3-betting range looks something like this:
Raising for value almost all of the time: AA, KK, QQ, AK
Raising for value the majority of the time: AQ, JJ
Sometimes raising for value: AJ, KQ, TT (and occasionally 99, and AT)
Raising as a bluff: QJ, JT, T9, 98, and some other connectors and gappers (e.g. 97) depending on how likely my opponent is to fold.
That doesn't mean I'm always 3-betting hands like JT and 98--against some players I'd do it frequently and against others I never would.
While it's certainly feasible to 3-bet a much wider range than this, given the generally low quality of play on Bovada and the fact that players are random and there's therefore no "history" that can exist between players, this is about as wide a range as I see being necessary. Regardless of where you're playing, if you can find the right circumstances and know your opponents and your own image, expanding your 3-betting range can be an important change to your game and new source of profit.
In a subsequent post, I'll talk a bit more about looking for ways to improve our 3-betting hand selection and identifying possible leaks.
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