Countering 3-bets

You raise from Middle Position and the Button 3-bets you for the 3rd time. It can get frustrating over time to play someone who constantly applies pressure to you. How do we deal with that? Let’s try looking at this situation from a defensive point of view.

Tight strategy

You generally want to be calling 3-bets in position. If at all possible, avoid doing it OOP. If you’re Out Of Position against a good, aggressive player, the best strategy is to simply fold against his 3-bets and tighten up your opening range. Folding is a neutral EV play; it is not a losing play. Unless you want to get into a variance war with the good player, you can tighten up your opening range and wait for a good hand. If you keep folding to his 3-bets, then he’s going to expect you to fight back and stack off lightly. However, you will fight back, when you have JJ+. Your Opponent is going to level himself into calling off with AQs/99-type hands. Just remember that when out of position, it’s a smaller mistake to call 3-bets too tight than too loose.

Playing Fit-Or-Fold

If you want to call with marginal hands, then you have to “play poker” on the flop. You can’t just fold to a Continuation Bet if you miss. Say you have 77. It’s a decent hand pre-flop, but it would be a mistake to call a 3-bet and fold when you don’t hit your set every time. You will not flop it nearly often enough to make it a profitable call pre-flop. Even when you do, you’ll still have to try to stack him off (which is easier said than done since his range is wide and he won’t have a strong enough hand post-flop to stack off). You must be willing to float and make plays if you want to play those pairs and suited connectors profitably.

Let me demonstrate.

You raise from the Cut-Off with Js 9s.
The Big Blind 3-bets and you call.
The flop is Qs 7d 3d.
He Continuation Bets and you call.
The turn is an 8c.
He checks and you check.
The river is a 6d.
He checks. What’s your play?

You should highly consider betting the river since he doesn’t have a strong hand very often. The board on the turn is drawy enough that he would bet any hand that is better than QJ. As for your range, you can reasonably have a flush. If he had a flush, then he would’ve bet the river. You can also have a pair of queens that went for pot control on the turn and is now betting for thin value. You could also rep a rivered two pair. He might end up calling with AQ+ but that’s rarely going to happen. Once he checks the river on this board, he’s going to check-fold most of the time. And since we can beat ace-high, we should bet.

Calling 3-bets with Pocket Pairs

Even with position, you should fold pocket pairs worse than 99 when stacks are less than 150BB. However, if you know your opponent well and know that he’s straightforward enough to Continuation Bet on a J52r and give up on the turn and river, you can call 3-bets with 55+. If you are out of position, unless the opponent is really passive, you should fold these pocket pairs out of position to 3-bets.

CO vs. Button

You can actually call with a wider range of hands here versus a button 3-bet because he will have hands like ATs, KTs, and QTs. For this reason, you can call with AQ, AJ, KQ, KJs, and QJs hands and play post-flop. Generally, against an aggressive opponent who has been active, I’m not going to fold if I flop a pair. Barring a disastrous turn and river that put 4 to a straight or 4 to a flush on the board, I’m going to check-call it off. You will lose sometimes when Your Opponent shows up with a real hand, but you will pick off some bluffs as well. Of course, if you see the nuts every time you go into check-call mode against a player who has been 3-betting you a lot, then maybe he doesn’t 3-bet you that often or maybe he does 3-bet you that often but he doesn’t fire multiple barrels as bluffs that often.

Late position vs. 3-bet from blinds
If Your Opponent has a very narrow 3-betting range, then I want to 4-bet to give him a chance to stack off with a range of JJ+/AK, which AA/KK dominates. By calling his 3-bet, he may slow down if the flop is bad for his hand and we fail to stack him.

If an opponent is 3-betting with a wide range, then I will call with my premium hands because I want to balance the times when I have marginal holdings. Against someone who is really aggressive, I will slow-play and then call down all three streets, even if the board gets scarier and scarier, because aggressive players’ bluffing frequencies increase as the board gets scarier. I almost never fold KK+ against them.

I would shove over Your Opponent’s bet on wet flops like T83s because that’s what I would do with my semi-bluffs on this board. If Your Opponent 3-bets a lot and Continuation Bets at a high percentage, then semi-bluffing the flop is insanely profitable since he will bet-fold very often.

On dry boards like Q73 rainbow, I would raise small or flat Your Opponent’s Continuation Bet if he’s the type to pounce on weakness and capable of firing multiple barrels with AK or random hands. This causes him to overplay his marginal hands. A small raise works well against opponents who aren’t very aggressive on the turn or the river. Additionally, there will be times where I will raise small on a flop as a bluff, so I want to do it with a weak hand as well. An argument can be made that if no one is paying attention, then balancing is overrated since your opponents are only playing their cards. Nevertheless, it’s important to develop a sense of how important balance is to your game so you can be aware of it as you move up.

Don’t jam the flop

Don’t always just get it in on the flop against a 3-better’s c-bet. Almost always call more with sets and two pairs. You probably already do that with medium pairs, so why not do it with the nuts? You don’t want to have an unbalanced range for calling and shoving. Calling the flop with strong hands some of the time will also prevent aggressive opponents from putting you on a weak hand and double-barrel bluffing you in the future.

Bluffing the Flop

Players who 3-bet too often also tend to Continuation Bet the flop frequently. Good boards for you to bluff-raise on are connected boards, and sometimes even Kxx or Qxx. Bluff-raising ace-high boards works on some opponents, but it’s better to call the flop Continuation Bet to represent more Ax-type hands. You probably wouldn’t raise a Continuation Bet with AT on A73 rainbow versus someone who 3-bets you pre-flop. You would call instead, and you’d do the same with your other strong holdings since he will bet his pair of aces on the turn anyway. When he checks the turn, check behind. Again, you do that with all your weak aces or smaller pairs. On the river, if he bets, you can fold since he isn’t bluffing often. If he checks, then you can bet 1/2- to 3/5-pot to take it down.

Inducing a Bluff

Some players never believe you when you raise a fairly dry flop. By raising, you represent such a narrow range of hands for value that a thinking Your Opponent will not give you credit for it. This is probably true because we would slow-play QQ on Q72 suited almost always. We will just call the flop with a weak top pair or medium pair. If Your Opponent is smart enough to recognize when your value range is really narrow, and if he is capable of 3-bet bluffing or floating out of position and betting the river if the turn goes check-check, then a dry board is a great spot to min-raise a Continuation Bet to induce a bluff.

The following example is a hand I played several years back against a tough aggressive player at 5/10.
He was sitting on several of my tables and I noticed that he would shove all-in on the flop with overcards if you min-raised his Continuation Bet in a 3-bet pot.
I picked up Ad Qs on the button and raised preflop.
He 3-bet from the Small Blind and I called.
The flop was Qd 7d 2s and he c-bet.
Normally I’d just raise big or shove it in, but after seeing his bluffy tendencies, I decided to min-raise.
He immediately shoved with KJo.

Most players at the micro-limits and small stakes are not capable of Your Opponent’s move. The purpose of this example is to show you how you can manipulate your opponent if you pick up on some of his tendencies. If you face a player who is capable of doing it, then you now know how to exploit him.

As you move up in stakes, you will realize that there’s more value to fast-playing your hands than slow-playing. As players get better, it’s more difficult to trap them. However, a lot of players want to make hero calls so if you’re playing your strong hands aggressively, you will get called more often than you think.

Here’s another example:

You raise pre-flop with As 6s in the Cut-Off and the Big Blind calls. He’s a good aggressive player.
The flop is 6h 6d 10c.
Your Opponent checks. You Continuation Bet and he check-raises. What do you do?

Almost everyone calls in this spot. You want to let him continue bluffing his hand. However, if he is smart, he will shut down on the turn, since you will have a hand stronger than Tx way more often than a float. So, if he is aggressive enough, you should 3-bet Your Opponent’s check-raise more often than call. He has been in this spot many times and every time someone calls a check-raise, they have a strong hand. By 3-betting, you are taking a different line and he may go crazy and try to bluff you or float out of position to take it down on a future street.

Posted by Joel on Jul 30 2010. Filed under Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry