Joe The Pro

3 bet pots

A while back I wrote about 3 bet pots and how after watching DC videos I was 3 betting a lot and trying it out. At that time I was getting totally killed using it incorrectly because I was following their advice without thinking about the stakes that were being played.

They were playing high stakes and I was not. The calling range of people at my stakes is much tighter, while the bluffing range is extremely tight. At one point I was 5 bet shoving with AQ if I even had a little bit of history with the person. I sure learned my lesson fast.

The single biggest thing I learned from 3 betting is that my cbets do not need to be very large at all. Half to 2/3 pot bets routinely can take down pots without a fight. You also do not need to cbet every flop. A lot of the value of cbetting lightly is for image/metagame and also taking the pot down right away preflop. It pays off itself when you have AA or KK and they stack off b/c of your 3betting; you don't always need to win every 3bet pot you initiate. Pick and choose good ones with high fold equity or check it down and if they show weakness on the turn shoot a barrel.

It also pays to pick who you are 3betting lightly.

There are 2 types of players to 3bet. The hyper aggressive guys and limpy mc.limp. Yet, you don't want to be reraising all hyper aggressive guys and limpy players.

I will 3bet the hyper aggressive guys who have nearly identical raise and VPIP numbers. These are players who play hard or not at all. Let's say his VPIP is 25 and his PFR is 24, this means he rarely plays looking to hit things, he plays only when he is the aggressor. If I reraise him, he will very likely fold. Now take someone with even higher PFR, say 26, meaning he's even raising with worse hands so theoritically, my 3bet should be even better to scare him to fold and take it down, but his VPIP is 35 (highly divergent from his PFR) so although he is likely be playing with crap, I'm not usually going to be able to take it down preflop b/c he'll call to speculate, thus losing a lot of my 3bet fold equity power.

But this is not to say I will not 3bet this sort of player either. If you combine that along with fold to flop cbet numbers and say it's over 80 percent. He might even be a better player to 3bet b/c he calls so much preflop and always fold on the flop.

To review:

VPIP/PFR/Fold to Cbet (flop)

25/24/60 - LAG who rarely plays pots w/o being the aggressor and I'll win it mostly preflop with a 3bet. YAY!

26/34/80 - LAG who will call my 3bet will likely give it up on the flop. YAY!

26/34/50 - LAG who calls my 3bet and doesn't give up easily on the flop. NAY! I just don't mess with this guy without premium holdings.

Then you have the limpy guys who play a lot. I usually raise it to 5BBs with premium holdings no matter what kind of fish they are, but say I'm light 3betting.

I pretty much only light 3bet with high VPIP players from any position if they have a high fold to CBET percent (pretty rare). Otherwise I will only do it on the button when I'm more sure that I can isolate the fish.

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