This is a concept that I think a lot of players are catching on to but not a lot of players are necessarily doing correctly.
First, there is far more pre-flop 3-betting online than live so I'll tackle the online game first.
What I usually see are people 3-betting their premium hands and suited connectors. I don't really think this is the way to go. Suited connectors have a lot of value in seeing a flop cheaply and hitting the board in two places or flopping a strong draw. If you 3-bet them you're either going to get folds from weakish hands or you're going to get 4-bet by monsters and be unable to continue. Only your small percentage of passive call station players will go to a flop with you.
I think you should be 3-betting your monsters but also 3-betting your hands that are not strong enough to call a raise like 107s, J9s, 35s, etc. This balances out your range quite nicely and when you do crush the flop you could win a massive pot. And if you miss the flop you're still playing your hand in position and your opponent must guess if this is when you have a premium hand or not.
Live poker is different. From my experience at Foxwoods and Borgata (and a little in Vegas) people in 1/2 and 2/5 games are only 3-betting their premium holdings with very few exceptions. For this reason I would probably elect to flat with almost my whole hand range that I decide to play, including premium hands (but this only applies if I'm closing the action or if the call means the pot is heads up). Granted, you may face tougher decisions on each street but I think you'll also extract more money this way since the 2/5 players love to bet aggressively on the flop and turn with most of their holdings that catch a piece.
At Borgata I saw a player commit about $250 to a hand holding 2nd pair and betting into top pair the whole way. And this isn't that abnormal based on my one week there. You just need the balls to muster up some pretty big calls at the end. Here's a hint: If it's a young Asian, never fold.
2 comments:
Welcome back! Guess you did okay - very good reads on the older man and the young asian guy.
What's your take on 3-betting in loose games, especially 3-betting weak hands? How weak are you willing to reraise, if you know there's a good chance you'd get called by one or more behind you?
/j.
I have a couple thoughts on that.
What I generally stick to is the old philosophy of playing the opposite of the rest of the table so I don't get sucked into 3-betting and 4-betting extremely light which does nothing but induce more variance and give them a luck advantage.
With 100 BB stacks you have to figure a typical 4-bet hand at $100 NL would go like this ...
You raise to $3.50
Villain raises to $12
You 4-bet to $40-49
So I'll typically 4-bet with 99+, KQs+, AQ+. Pretty standard, really. In a very loose game I'll get it all-in preflop with hands like Tens and Jacks and I'm usually in decent shape there.
In a very loose game I'll often smooth call the villain's 3-bet AA/KK and some times QQ. Then I simply let him bet my hand for my so long as it is a dry board. If the board is coordinated I'll of course need to stick in a large raise to protect my hand and evaluate on later streets.
Hope that response wasn't too generic because it's still player dependent even at a loose table. Some players are only super loose pre-flop and then play ABC poker after the flop. Actually, at 1/2 NL and below this is the case most of the time. Once you play 2/4 and higher each street is a tough decision.
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