BluffTheSpot 101 Poker Guide 7 tips to improve 3Bet Pots 1. Be tight out of position Calling a 3 bet out of position is one of the most difficult situations in poker. Having a capped range plus adding the fact that we are out of position makes it hard. If we are playing against an aggressive opponent, he will be able to put us in very tough spots post flop. Also, our range is very face up and we will often be left guessing for our entire stack on the river with a medium strength hand. Now, what can we do to counter that? Call a tight range out of position! Especially in tight range scenarios (UTG vs CO 3b for example). We can start folding low pocket pairs like 22-66 and suited connectors. Calling them on some occasions (25% of the time) is also fine but we must make sure that we are mostly folding them. Even hands as strong as 77 and 88 are getting folded sometimes in those tight range’s situation. Of course, if we are in situations where the ranges are wider like BU vs CO, we can go ahead and call wider. All in all, make sure to keep in mind that when facing a 3b out of position, calling a tight range will be the right approach. 2. What to do post flop after calling a 3 bet? Implement an aggressive check raising strategy! Even though your range is missing the absolute best hands, your range still has a good amount of equity in general and using an aggressive check raising strategy in most situations will be the right approach. Most people tend to play too passively out of position and player in position can just play perfectly. He can bet flop at high frequency to make us fold our air and when we do call, he can just check back turn and see all 3 cards for one small bet on the flop. He is also last to act, so he always has the luxury on the river to just check back with hands like AK/AQ and get to showdown. This might be surprising to you but the preferred check-raise sizing is anywhere from a min-raise to 2.2x on the lower boards. There are even board where our entire continuing range only wants to check raise. Let’s take a closer look into one of these situations. MP opens, CO 3b’s and MP calls the 3b out of position. Board is Ad Jh 2c MP checks and CO continuation bet for 1/3rd size with his entire range. Here are both players range’s. CO 3 betting range (9.13%, 121 combos) Turning Players Into Pros www.bluffthespot.com MP 3b calling range (5.18%, 68 combos) Note : As you can see, not all the combos of AJs,ATs,KQs,KJs,AKo,JJ are in the calling range. The other combos are not folded but they are instead getting used as a 4b. Other hands like 77/88/QTs/KTs are mostly getting folded. KTs can also be used as a 4b low frequency. Turning Players Into Pros www.bluffthespot.com Let’s take a look at how MP player needs to be defending versus that strategy. We can see from the picture above that our defending strategy includes a LOT of folding (59%), very little calling (11%) and an aggressive check raising strategy (25%). This strategy might seem counter intuitive at first and most players will not be playing these types of situations correctly. The good thing is that after reading this you will have a better idea on how to approach this situation on high boards. Turning Players Into Pros www.bluffthespot.com 3. Look into pre flop sizes Most people do not pay attention to sizes. You need to be able to adjust your defending ranges whether if it is defending from the BB or facing a 3b/4b. Depending on the sizing we are facing we might have to play quite different strategies. Let us look into this situation: We open MP 2.2bb and BU 3b’s 7bb. In that situation, villain’s 3b size makes sense and I would try to play my default strategy. My question to you guys is have you ever encountered players who are 3 betting your 2.2bb open to 9bb/10bb/11bb IP or even bigger? My guess is yes! I am also quite certain that at some point you were not sure about how to approach that situation. Maybe you did not even think that the sizing would influence your strategy. Keep in mind that when villain uses a big 3b size we are getting bad odds to call. Also, by 3 betting bigger, there is more money into the pot to go after so 4 betting becomes more attractive. At some point, when villain uses a very big 3b sizing, we can just start playing a quite simple strategy that involves 0% calls and we just 4b our entire continuing range. This is something important and most people do not pay enough attention to those type of details. Turning Players Into Pros www.bluffthespot.com 4. Stay away of the dominated off-suit broadways They might be looking pretty but they will get you into a world of trouble, especially out of position. Most of the time, you flop a strong top pair and when all the money goes in you will often be behind with little chance of improving. We can play off suit broadways (not all of them) in position and in wider ranges scenarios like BU vs SB 3b. When out of position, I would fold them all with the exception of AQo which is often used as a 4b bluff 100bb deep. In blind vs blind scenario, we can start calling a lot of off suit broadways out of position (KJo/AJo/KQo) because BB’s range should be much wider. You must be avoiding those when out of position in CO/MP/UTG. That also goes back to tip number 1 where we need to call tight and be tight in general out of position facing a 3b and that includes folding those offsuit broadways. Turning Players Into Pros www.bluffthespot.com 5. 4B aggressively out of position We just talked about previously how tight we should be calling OOP. This is also because some of the hands that most people are always calling make really good 4b candidate. Let us take a look at another example. We open MP and BU 3b. Let’s take a look into what a solid 4 betting range would look like vs an aggressive player on the BU. 4 bet range MP vs BU (62 combos, 4.68%) As you can see here, there are many hands that are a somewhat counter intuitive in there. (ATs/AJs/KTs-KQs) Are you surprised by that? If the answer is yes, that means you were probably calling too much and now can start approaching this situation much differently. Turning Players Into Pros www.bluffthespot.com 6. Always think in ranges and not positions Too many players make the mistake of looking at positions and then play their strategy accordingly. This can lead to big mistakes because not everybody will open the same ranges in each position. For example, some players open very tight from EP and open very wide in later positions. Some other players are opening tighter on the button or the SB. You always must look into his raised first in (RFI) by position to decide how wide you want to be 3 betting him. Let’s say BU opens and his RFI 29%. Even though you are in a SB vs BU situation, you will be treating this situation like you were playing SB vs CO. The reason behind it is that he is opening a CO range. We would now have to adjust our 3-betting range and use our SB vs CO 3 betting strategy. 7. Bad bluffing hands on the flop can become great bluffing hands on turn or river We can also say the opposite: Great bluffing hands on the flop can become bad bluffing hands on the turn/river. The first type of hands that comes to mind are the high equity hands like flush draws. They are great hands to bet on the flop and on the turn. But, when we get to the river, we block the hands that we want to make fold. Therefore, it is important to be betting all types of bluffs on flop and turns. If all your bluffs are flush draw’s on flop/turn and river brings a flush, that means you have no bluffs anymore. This happens quite a lot at lower stakes that all their bluffing range consists of high equity driven hands. Let’s take a look at another example. BU opens, we 3b from the SB and he calls. Board is Ad 8c 2s. We continuation bet with our entire range for a 30% sizing. Turning Players Into Pros www.bluffthespot.com Here is a screenshot of the expected value (EV) on the flop for KQs specifically. You can see in the bottom right corner all the expected values for the different suits of KQs. We see basically that KQdd, KQcc,KQss have EV’s between 28-33 and then KQhh has significantly lower EV with just under 12. It makes sense that KQhh has much lower EV because it does not have back door flush draw on the flop.