let's talk about flat calling 3bets preflop

sikes

As fuzz made the point, he can play perfectly against us. It would be very easy to do the maths on this, I dont have the time atm, but your 4 bet shove is definately not a winner, it cant be.

CaptainNemo

LuckyLloyd wrote:

If you are doing that 20% of the time at random then it is surely profitable for them to continue 3 - betting you liberally.

Is it? I don't know. We are not just going to be folding the rest of the time...all I'm suggesting is that you need to mix in a shove a certain % of the time to undermine his strategy. I don't think that NEVER shoving here is good.

CaptainNemo

sikes wrote:

As fuzz made the point, he can play perfectly against us. It would be very easy to do the maths on this, I dont have the time atm, but your 4 bet shove is definately not a winner, it cant be.

I'm sure you can prove this mathematically and I certainly wouldn't be able to argue against it. I really am coming from a more psychological perspective which I would find hard to back up except from personal opinion on the game, but I am certain from experience that there are situations where it is mathematically incorrect yet (over a session) profitable to make certain plays.

E.g. You raise with AT and get 3-bet from the blinds. You shove, he folds 99 and you show. Has he played perfectly? Will he play perfectly next time this situation occurs?

sikes

CaptainNemo wrote:

I'm sure you can prove this mathematically and I certainly wouldn't be able to argue against it. I really am coming from a more psychological perspective which I would find hard to back up except from personal opinion on the game, but I am certain from experience that there are situations where it is mathematically incorrect yet (over a session) profitable to make certain plays.

E.g. You raise with AT and get 3-bet from the blinds. You shove, he folds 99 and you show. Has he played perfectly? Will he play perfectly next time this situation occurs?

Poker is a mathematical game, if it doesnt make sense mathimatically, its wrong. Your example in isolation can be both good and bad depending on a load of factors but 4 bet pushing is going to cost, whether it be a -EV play depends, but trying to fit it in to a good strategy is going to cost. Someone who 4bets push is going to keep getting 3bet by good players becuase its easily exploitable, its not an effective defensive against 3bets and showing is making the situation worse.

ocallagh

CaptainNemo wrote:

E.g. You raise with AT and get 3-bet from the blinds. You shove, he folds 99 and you show. Has he played perfectly? Will he play perfectly next time this situation occurs?

that is results orientated. he had 99 and folded. what if he had AA? You should be working off ranges, and not particular hands.

For example, if their range is any two cards and they will call you with any two cards, then AT would be a profitable push. This rarely occurs, only against maniacs.

If their 3-bet range is 99+, AJs+ and they call your push with TT+ and AJs+ then your push is absolutely horrible.

If their 3-bet range is 44+, A5s+ and they call your push with 88+ and AQ+ then your push is not so bad, still probably a losing play though.

If their 3-bet range is very wide and they call your push with any pair and KQs, A8s+ then your push is ok. (getting close to a mainiac again here)

Bozzer

I think fuzz is really on the money in this thread.

Guys like cts with v high att. to steal %’s thrive on bad tags who open up their 3betting range from the blinds but play poorly oop in reraised pots. These guys have had success against weak opposition who either fold too often preflop or on the flop, but against tough opponents who are capable of effective countermeasures they end up ceding pots oop postflop. And as a corollary by always reraising strong hands you make ‘raised pots’ easy money for the preflop raiser (but that’s another thread).

Against good opponents it's really tough to analyse these spots meaningfully. There are tons of textures, tons of preflop and game-flow variables to consider.
3betting isn't nearly as effective as it used to be. Now it's so commonplace that most people have ranges/frequencies that aren't trivially exploitable, so it's a variance war and no one wins. Except the few who outguess everyone, or run well or luckbox their way to great frequencies.

CaptainNemo

sikes wrote:

Poker is a mathematical game, if it doesnt make sense mathimatically, its wrong.

I don't think this is correct. Obviously it would be impossible to prove it mathematically though :-D

Poker is also, in fact almost predominantly, a psychological game. Maybe you guys are talking more about online play than live?

Anyway sikes I've seen you post really good stuff before so I'm listening to you on this issue but I have a feeling that the opponents you're describing are a higher calibre than the ones I'm talking about.

I do get the feeling that people are missing the point I'm trying to make. Talking about whether pushing A10 in 1 specific hand is profitable or not is irrelevant. If you could find 1 correct way of playing in any given situation then computers would be beating humans at poker. The kind of poker we're talking about in this thread is like rock, paper, scissors, or maybe even a game of chicken. Psychology becomes an extremely important factor.

sikes

Pyscology is just another variable in the equation that determines their range.

We should try and keep the thread on topic!

robinlacey

wow loads to get through...

i've a few things to do so i probably won't be able to read all this properly till later on or tomorrow,looks like some interesting points have been made though,i'm looking forward to going through it all properly.

Vamos

cts made a good post in his old blog that deals with this, it might be a bit dated but a good read anyway.

http://cts687.livejournal.com/14591.html

opr

Also Jman has started a thread on 2+2 with some good discussion not directly about this but related to the whole subject.

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=11354065&page=0&fpart=1&vc=1

Opr

robinlacey

nice work everyone,lots of interesting stuff to think about.i'm too tired to write a full response but there were a couple of things i noticed straight away reading through that i wanted to comment on.

Bozzer wrote:

FTP’s pr1nnyraid had some thoughts on this subject a few months back

Someone said you never fold to a 3bet...explain.

here's an example for you. TAG 3-bets me and I have XY. I know/believe they're 3-betting light and I call. I flop a gutshot, they c-bet, and I shove. Uh oh, I run into AA. He wins a stack. Or, I call with XY, shove with air and run into a set. Spewing money, yes? Of course. But for one, they WILL fold on lots of occasions, and occasionally fold the best hand, to START, and secondly, if they see me shoving with nothing, they're going to have to bet/call with the bulk of their range in the future, no? Like 99 on a J high flop or even QQ on an A high flop? Which means that if I adjust well enough, I can start getting AI with JT on that J high flop or A5s on that A high flop, whereas if normal considerations were in effect, I'd be calling and hoping to check it down. Another consideration: TAG sees me calling his 3-bets with whatever I opened with. He now feels that he needs to continue to 3-bet me light because his hand preflop is perceived to be better than mine preflop, with no plans for how to play me OOP in a bloated pot postflop. Which leads to people bet/calling AT on QQ4 flops against me when I shove 66.

this is interesting and makes a lot of sense,and is kind of what i was getting at in my vague mumblings about doing some maths with that new program that tracks 3betting frequencies and all the rest.

however i think this gets into metagame stuff quite a lot,which is interesting but not fully what i was mainly interested in,which is whether we should be opening up ranges for calling 3bets from generic solid enough opponents. not that its not worth talking about,far from it,but i think one of the things with this is that krantz plays nosebleed stakes where the player pool is a lot smaller and so you are playing a lot more against specific opponents and their tendencies- i'd imagine that this is the case at 25/50 and higher a lot of the time,but at 2/4 to 10/20 there will usually (hopefully) only be one or two regulars at the table,and in general i try and steer clear of them as much as possible.still interesting stuff and i'll think a lot more about it for situations where i can't avoid playing regular thinking or semi-thinking players.

even as it stands a situation often develops where i can call a 3bet with weaker hands against certain opponents because i have been playing against them in such a way as to force them to widen the range of hands they will stack off with postflop,sometimes i've just been running them over a bit and i know they will start to make a stand,other times i've been caught bluffing,and other times it just happens that i've hit some good hands against them which haven't gone to showdown so i know that my image with them is going to force them to stack off fairly easily.even this though is metagame stuff which doesn't come up that often and is much more of a feel/rhythm thing than anything else.

robinlacey

Ste05 wrote:

I'm glad you started this thread Robin, I'm up to my eyes at the minute to reply properly, but I will later, however one point to take note of is the Blind 3-better has by far the worse position, all he knows is we've raised PF then called a 3-bet, he has very little knowledge, and before he finds out anything he will have committed 1/3 of his stack, (13BB's for the 3-bet and then another ~20 in his inevitable C-bet) we have complete control of the hand, we can decide to 4-bet and see if he wants to get AI PF, he'll fold all hands he's not willing to push with, so there's no problem just calling when in position with AA/KK as well, we haven't shown weakness, in fact we've shown strength. I could go on for ages about this, I'm basically doing the same thing Robin did and just thinking out loud, I'll continue my ramble later.

But one of the most important thing that changes and makes our position much stronger is that we will see the flop texture before making a decision and can base our decision based on that, in general as Robin says, the 3-bettor will nearly always fire a c-bet, (unless the flop is really gross) we can then see what the flop texture is like see what it looks like, decide if: (a) will it fit his range (b) does it fit our perceived range (c) does it actually hit us at all (d) etc. etc. etc. There's no calling to see what he does on the turn in my mind, if I call the flop, I'm letting him bluff his chips off, or not allowing him to fold a weaker hand then mine. I'm usually pushing or folding based on my perceived fold equity, my hand equity against his range, history etc. etc. it's a shallow hand and should be played as such with adjusted hand ranges based on history and table dynamics.

If he checks the flop then the whole thing changes again but again we have more information. I'll post more later....

I'm looking forward to this thread and I didn't re-read what I wrote above nor put a whole lot of thought into it so if it's complete gobbledygook, apologies I'll correct it later, also Nice posts Bozzer and Robin.

interesting post and i'll read over it and think more about it again.however one line made me realise something i've been vaguely thinking for a while without properly articulating it to myself,which i think is fairly central to the whole discussion.

you say "it's a shallow hand and should be played as such with adjusted hand ranges based on history and table dynamics."

this is true,but is also problematic because its not like other shallow stacked situations.in a tournament when you are shallow stacked and you hit top pair you're getting it in and you don't have to think about it. this is what makes shallow stacked poker very easy.

however the fact that it is a reraised pot completely changes the dynamics,i mean on full tilt at 5/10 and up it probably is getting to the point where the games are so agressive and there's so much three betting preflop that the game almost becomes a shallowed stacked game the whole time,but i try and avoid playing in those types of games!

there's still plenty of games up to 25/50 on the internet which aren't that crazy yet (and long may it continue!) but there is still an awful lot more 3betting going on than in the past. and in these games the fact that its a reraised pot still means something,you still have to tread fairly carefully,which means that its not quite as simple as just seeing them as a normal shallow stack situation.

now i'm still undecided as to the implications of this (and by the time i've decided the games will probably have gotten to the point where we're 5betting J9s preflop for value!) but it basically seems to get back to the problem of not having enough information to make a good decision.

this year i haven't played nearly as much poker as i should have,but most of the poker i have played has been in 5/10 6 max games on sites other than stars and full tilt.there is a lot of three betting in these games,and they are fairly tough,but i still think i have an edge on the regulars,and most of this comes down to how bad they are with metagame situations.

the most common mistake i exploit in these solid taggish regulars is the fact that they get sick of being constantly three bet and make calls that are way too loose preflop and then stack off too lightly postflop.basically,i'm agressive,but i'm not that agressive,and they fail to realise this and adjust to it. at the moment i'm trying to get back to playing loads of hands of disciplined poker,and i decided to start out playing 20k hands of 2/4,and i've found the players to be really terrible,and they're particularly bad at dealing with this sort of carry on.this makes me think that in these 2/4 to 10/20 games it might not be necessary to open up our calling ranges much because they're all doing it and doing it so badly that that might be where our edge is coming from.

i think this experience of playing otherwise alright players who make such a hames of these situations is one of the reasons i was against calling 3bets more in the first place.

now obviously the fact that other people are doing something badly is not a reason for us not to try to do it well,but i suppose what this whole thread is about is trying to figure out how possible it is to do this well,or if its necessary or even possible or whatever.

robinlacey

fuzzbox wrote:

When ppl continue to 3-bet my LP opens, then I feel that I should combat this in some way. I believe that 4-betting is quite risky, and that, over the long term, it doesnt make me more difficult to play against.

another very good post,lots to think about.however i have to disagree with this,i think in a lot of situations 4betting is the answer and is still very profitable,i'm not saying its the only solution but i think it definitely should be in your arsenal.

i also don't see how you think 4betting doesn't make you more difficult to play against,if i had a choice between playing opponents who never 4bet bluff preflop and opponents who do i know which one i would choose.

robinlacey

CaptainNemo wrote:

.

If you find it uncomfortable playing TT against a reraise then you may even consider mixing in some limp-reraising with this hand so that you're the one applying maximum pressure?
.

i really don't like limp reraising with TT because this overrepresents your hand,which is not something you want to do be doing except when you are bluffing,with a hand as strong as TT overrepresenting it from the get go is going to put you in a lot of horrible spots.

robinlacey

NickyOD wrote:

Hand 2.

I open from EP for $16 with QQ and the button who is new to the table. min re-raises me on the button. He has $280. The BB colds calls the $28. Back to me and $12 to call into a $68 pot Probably very profitable to just call but I feel like I end up folding the best hand on the flop way too often so I make it $90 to go. He min reraises me again for $60 more. I fold.

Is my 4 bet bad? If yes then I should probably just call with KK also since it is basically the same hand as QQ in this situation.

i think 4 betting preflop with QQ and folding a reraise is pretty awful in general,and especially against someone with only 2/3 of a stack.

in these modern agressive games if you can't profitably get it all in preflop almost all the time with QQ then i don't think you are playing nearly agressively enough,AK and QQ have become hands i automatically get it all in with preflop unless i have a specific reason not to,and the way games are going JJ will probably end up joining that list soon.

robinlacey

ocallagh wrote:

3-bets seem to have reduced the skill level required to play the turn or river with only 100BBs. Your decision preflop, on the flop including mainly position, ranges(PAHUD etc), FE and PE (and also your ability to hit flops) have taken over 100BB NLHE.

I think it's time we had 300BB tables so we can play a turn and a river in 3-bet pots.

i think this intuitively seems like a good idea but in practice it wouldn't be.

the trouble is that deep stacked tables are always going to be a minority interest on any site that opens them,and will attract much better players,since these are the only ones that want to play deep stacked.(this already happened on full tilt as far as i know)

i think if a 5/10 fish had the 2000 buyin to play deep stacked 5/10,he'd just take it to 10/20 instead.

100bbs is fairly ingrained as the standard internet max,a lot of sites even name their stakes accordingly,and i can't see this changing,at least for the fish.

one consolation though is that with these games getting more agressive and more and more pots being played for stacks,the 100bb games often end up getting deeper quicker,so we do get to play more deep stacked pots against the fish without relying on them consciously choosing to do so.

robinlacey

hmm,those replies were fairly all over the place and unfocused,even by my standards,hopefully i'll be a little more coherent after some sleep!

there's certainly a lot of food for thought in the thread,and those links that opr and vamos put up both look really interesting,i'm looking forward to reading them.

one general point worth making though is that i think people are underestimating the power of 4betting. there's a lot of talk about it,but aside from full tilt i don't think theres that much going on and i still think its very effective and being sold short a bit on this thread. in my experience about one in four habitual 3bettors will hardly ever fold to a 4bet,and i put notes on these people,but the rest will almost always just give up with most of their three betting range.

it has got a bit more complicated recently though,a few months ago there was a bit of a rhythm thing where you'd let the first few 3bets slide and then after a while you'd have to 4bet to take a stand,sort of like the "fixing to play a pot" thing.

these days 3betting and particularly squeezing is so common that if i sit down at a table against unknown opponents and one of the first things that happens is that i raise in the cutton,the button calls and the BB 3bets i will pretty much always 4bet.

this is partially because people are 3betting so much that you can just assume that an average unknown is more likely to be squeezing than betting for value here,but also because that rhythm that i talked about earlier has sort of become the "standard",its just part of the routine and everyone knows it,but people will usually give you credit the first time since they will tend to think you aren't 4betting light until they've 3bet you a few times. i also try to find other somewhat less obvious spots to 4bet,for example against some players (not many though!) you can 4bet twice in a row and they will think "well he's not going to have the balls to do it twice in a row with nothing"

fuzzbox

Hey Robin,
This thread is not about 4-betting more, its about expanding our 3-bet calling range.

4-betting has its place in the world.

So does calling 3-bets in position more often, so that when we are 3-bet we dont get into a "call with pairs" and 4-bet/fold everything else.

robinlacey

fuzzbox wrote:

Hey Robin,
This thread is not about 4-betting more, its about expanding our 3-bet calling range.

4-betting has its place in the world.

So does calling 3-bets in position more often, so that when we are 3-bet we dont get into a "call with pairs" and 4-bet/fold everything else.

well i don't think its a simple as that,our 4betting and folding frequencies when we are 3bet are surely germane to a discussion on flat calling preflop.

RedJoker

Very interesting thread so far and a subject which has been on my mind for a while as well.

I think a 3 bet calling frequency has to be based on your ability to play 3 bet pots post flop.

I also think that postflop play needs to be analyzed first and hence, which hands are best to call 3 bets with, before we can come to conclusions on optimal 3 bet calling frequencies. Unfortunately, that's fairly subjective and depends on a lot of variables.

4 betting needs to be considered as well but, imho, it doesn't need to be a shove. A smaller 4 bet may have close to the same FE as a shove and also allows you to consider whether calling a 5 bet shove is a profitable play against specific opponents. A tl;dr discussion on equity vs. 5 bet shoves.

30something

bump

(how did this thread get down to page 2!!!!!!)