Today I want to talk about opening your 3-bet range. This is one key aspect of the game that most beginners fail to do. Even many novice players fail here who could be regular winning players at higher stakes and are only break even players at their current stakes because of this. The following examples are mainly for 8-10 handed cash games and full tables at tournaments while averagestacks are 75+bb deep. It also works in short stack play, but that's another 2k+ word blog.
I see many players do it all the time, especially the old folks in the Casino's off the strip here in LV. Suppose you're on the button with QQ and a middle position player raises 3x and is called by the cutoff. So many players flat call in this spot. When you have a big pocket pair you have one objective preflop. You want a large pot against one player.Against one player there is less of a chance he draws out on you plus you increase your equity postflop as well simply by drawing your opponent in with great odds.
That should be fairly simple to understand, but what I want to show you is how wide we can 3-bet and show a profit. 3-betting preflop shows a great deal of strength so on almost any dry board your opponent will give you credit for a hand post-flop, even if they got a piece of the flop they will be careful assuming a large part of your range consists of overpairs.Therefore, you will be able to steal a lot of pots when you 3-bet AJos in position and miss the flop.
Tight players will usually open with a good hand, even in position we'll say ATs+, AJos+ KQs and 88+. However, most of their range will not be worth a call after a 3-bet in their minds. So you can profitably 3-bet almost any hand with potential against these players such as suited connectors and low pairs.
Loose players will open much wider but to profitably 3-bet you only need to raise about 30% of their range, especially if they open from late position. I'd say 3-bet about the same as the tight players opening range that I just stated.
Now here's one great example in a hand I played recently live at a 1/2 table. Table was semi-loose but very aggro. One player was up about $500 and was opening about 30% of the pots constantly varying the size of his raises, so I know the amount he raises means something. I'm on the bb with AKos and he opens from the cutoff for $22 (11bb) after 3 limpers.
Now I know he has a strong hand but certainly doesn't want a lot of action. I had a stack of $182, exactly $160 more. I put him on QQ or AK, possibly JJ. I figured if we went all in I have almost enough equity to make the call but not quite. I definitely don't want to put this much money in out of position and go to the flop. However, I can't raise to something like $60 because I am committing myself to the pot. I can take the easy way out and fold leaving my $2 all to him.
However, even though he is loose and up a lot of money I know I have a decent amount of fold equity here. So I shove for $160 more. He turns QQ face up into the muck. Many players here would call, which is actually your worst option. Some tight variance nits will fold, but the only play here with +EV is to shove and that's what I did. Just an example here of why you should always go through your options and remember that 3-betting is always an option.
Don't overuse the 3-bet, usually you just want to 3-bet strong hands. However, we can't polarize our range that much. As I said before we can 3-bet fairly light against a lot of tight players. Remember also,if action folds to the button he will usually open about 50% of range and he's right in doing so. Here, I wouldn't 3-bet with hands that figure to beat 50% of his range but rather about 25-30% of range plus some extra hands with potential. A great example is something like 64s, this way your not polarizing your range.
Use this advice, especially in cash games, and I guarentee you make more money over your next 1k hands. So much for keeping it short, hope you enjoyed.
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