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Originally Posted by baudib
In my games, there's really never a reason to not play exploitatively, but all of Griffey's talk about having strong c/c ranges and putting good hands in unexpected spots has me intrigued. I regularly 3-bet/4-bet way way wider than anyone in my games (my image is pretty maniacal) and I've realized that this has made my range in certain spots extremely weak.
So let's experiment with having some strong hands in my flatting range.
This is kinda too general to make too much of, but I think there are a lot more factors to take into account than you seem to be (especially Hand 3). I agree that you can't just be like, "Everyone plays so bad, let's not think about my range formation at all," but just thinking through preflop flat or 3b spots at these games, I can't think of a ton of situations where it's all that advantageous to take out value 3bs just to make your flatting range stronger. When you're in spots where villain has a wide opening range, then I think you're mostly better off keeping your 3b'ing range as wide as possible (regardless of what the balance of value:bluff is) and only flatting when you have a clear advantage. Are you finding that there are certain players who are getting away with barreling you off of 87s a ton or something?
I actually started to write about how it won't generally be good against villains who open a tight opening range, but I think I changed my mind on this one. If you're facing someone who 1) opens only for value, and it's a tight range (TT+ (sometimes 88/99), AQ+ (sometimes AJ), (sometimes KQs)), 2) they pretty much don't fold to 3bs and their 4b'ing range is too tight to continue against without KK+, 3) they play much more sheepishly in 3b pots than in single raised ones, then I think it is probably good to have some strong flatting hands in position against these players. It's always been my standard to value 3b anything that's ahead of their calling range when playing people who 4b too tight, but I think having JJ/QQ in your flatting range can protect your redline against cbets for all those times you set mine/call with SCs. I think you get more in overpair vs overpair coolers (given condition 3), especially if the board is wet enough that you both play fast on the flop and turn (if you 3b preflop and the flop comes 7-high, then he's gonna be scared of overpairs regardless of texture; if, on the other hand, you flat pre and the flop comes 762tt, and you raise his cbet, he's going to have an extremely tough time getting away from 88, and you'll almost definitely get JJ's stack; he's either going to make a mistake against this hand or against our SCs). It also reduces our 3b/folding range, which makes us harder to play against.
So yeah, I think in that case, both plays are about equally exploitative, and flatting makes you tougher to exploit in several areas, so that's probably a good place to apply this lesson. Unless of course you're at the type of table where you expect everyone left behind you to flat any raise, then that changes everything.
But again, I would be very wary about over-applying the idea that you need to strengthen your flatting range.
Hand 1:
I would usually say this is all about how you think you can play against him in 4bs (if he never really 4bs worse, then 3b'ing is great range manipulation because now you only have to face hands that you're ahead of; if he 4bs wide enough that there's a way to exploit it [either flatting or getting AIPF], then you can obv 3b here; if you're saying "FML I don't know what the hell this LAgg could be doing this with" when he 4bs, then obv 3b'ing is bad), BUT I think this is a bad spot to apply what you said above.
Decent live LAggs are usually very much of a feel type player, and they're the ones who are most likely to get splashy if they think that you wouldn't usually have JJ+ when you flat preflop. You can tank/call a lot of flops and laugh as he spews into you on the turn and river. If you 3b, you have to play the game where hope that he never 4bs worse (or if he does 4b a lot, then thing really get fun) and then play the thin value extraction game postflop when he calls because he'll probably become cautious once you 3b pre and fire multiple barrels post.
As played, I don't know why you're kicking yourself over how you played it. Preflop is really the only questionable street for me. As I said earlier, I hope you tanked the flop before calling, and you could probably vbet the river bigger than 1/2 PSB (assuming you're not FML'ing if he shoves the remaining <$100), but you pretty much played the hand exactly as you should.
Hand 3:
No notes on villain listed, so you'll have to take what I say with a massive grain of salt, but I hate this hand as an application of strengthening your flatting range. Dependent of BTN and BB, you're often not even really going to have a flatting range, and whatever flatting range you do have is pretty strong anyway, so you don't need to protect it with JJ. I think flatting here's so bad against the vast majority of villains, and every street postflop is tough now. I don't understand c/c flop, c/c turn, lead river. Really the only reason I'm c/c'ing flop and turn (instead of leading or c/r'ing one of those two streets) is because villain is the type of person to hang himself on this sort of board, and if that's the case, then leading the river on a blank is a terrible (though, on this particular card, it might be good to lead if he isn't going to vbet 9x/TT).
If villain isn't the type to hang himself on this sort of board, then I'm taking the driver seat at some point in this hand. Well, obviously I would because I said we should take it preflop, haha, but you know what I'm saying.
Hand 4:
Sure, yeah, 4b, whatever. Overlimping is a weird thing to do with KK+, and we have the nut blocker hand, so I'm not folding. I'm not sure about sizing because I'm not sure what the fuck we're doing with our life if he flats. I probably go this sizing, then go $50 on just about any flop ($50 -> $80 -> shove [is that too thin on a K-high board?] when we hit; if we miss, then a tiny cbet should take it down against weird ass hands that don't hit).
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