KK in the blinds vs. percieved steal (10NL)

[kfaess]

Villain is 64/24/4.0 over 70 hands. He also has a 64% steal, 91% c-bet, 43% fold to c-bet.

Party Poker No-Limit Hold'em, $0.10 BB (6 handed) - Party-Poker Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) ($11.05)
UTG ($11.80)
MP ($4.65)
CO ($9.95)
Button ($20.35)
SB ($19.75)

Preflop: Hero is BB with K, K
3 folds, Button bets $0.40, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.30

Flop: ($0.85) 9, 3, 4 (2 players)
Hero checks, Button bets $0.40, Hero raises $1.20, Button raises $1.90, Hero calls $1.10

Turn: ($5.45) 2 (2 players)
Hero bets ???, 1 fold

Total pot: $5.45

My reasoning is that he is so LAG that I would rather flat his raise than blow him out of the pot preflop with a 3-bet. He is stealing so much that I think he has a weak hand so often here that I can make more by letting him put money in. Also, he's c-betting way too much so if I check it to him he's very likely to put a bet in.

When he put out the $0.40 bet on the flop, I figured I should raise since this bet is so small and the board is a little drawy. Not sure about the sizing of this bet, but I thought 3x would induce more calls?? He puts in what is almost a min-reraise and I wasn't sure what to make of this bet in real time, so I just called it hoping for more aggression on the turn. Maybe I should just shove at that point and not give the draws a chance to stack me?

Turn completes some draws but I'm not really worried about it because if I'm not mistaken it only helped a small portion of his range. I think what we do here depends on what you think of his flop play. The small reraise to me either indicates a lot of strength or a bluff. If we think he's bluffing then we probably want to check it right? And even if we think he's really strong, the money is probably going in anyways so we might as well check and induce bluffs from part of his range??

Result in white below:

I led out the turn for $3.10 because at the time I thought after the flop reraise he wasn't going anywhere. He folded.

[kb coolman]

Raise him pre-flop.

Your bet sizing should be such to get your stack in the middle. You pretty much have to shove the turn here, giving your line and the current pot.

[kfaess]

Raise him pre-flop.

Care to elaborate? Usually I do 3-bet but against this particular opponent I thought I could just call pre.

If I take your advice then I'd like to know the logic behind my actions and not just the correct play, otherwise I'm lost in the rest of the hand.

[kb coolman]

You're raising for value here for when he folds the flop.

[Carroters]

I would defo ship the flop here. Lets get him to stack off with his Q9 or what not before any scare cards fall and also not give him a cheap peel when he has hearts or sd.

[bigspenda73]

not 3betting this guy is just extremely incorrect

[kfaess]

ok I've got 2 people telling me that not 3-betting is incorrect but neither is telling me why its incorrect. maybe you guys want me to figure it out on my own??

Anyway here are some reasons for why I think its incorrect:
--we're oop so getting all the money in is going to be harder if we don't 3-bet preflop.
--we're up against a loose opponent who is likely to call a 3-bet with a good portion of his raising range
--our opponent also happens to be pretty aggressive, so when he makes a hand he wants to continue with he will have to put more money in the pot if we 3-bet than if we just call pf. also, he'll have less time post flop to figure out he is beat before his stack is in the middle.
--if he is a thinking opponent then he knows that he has a loose image and that we know he is stealing a lot. so that may lead him to believe we are playing back at him and thus get him to stack off looser.

I think the last point has less importance since he probably isn't a thinking player.

even if you guys weren't waiting for me to answer the why question I'd still like to know why not 3-betting is incorrect.

[bjsaust]

Look at it this way, if we ever 3-bet bluff then the whole point of that is to balance our 3-bet value range. If we're not going to 3-bet for value then we shouldnt be 3-betting at all.

In this specific case, the guy is aggro. Give him a chance to spaz out.

[bigspenda73]

I'd still like to know why not 3-betting is incorrect.

hell I want to know why not 3betting is correct, you haven't given better than a half-ass argument for it.

[kb coolman]

You're raising for value here for when he folds the flop.

[kfaess]

kb coolman wrote:
You're raising for value here for when he folds the flop.

alright that makes sense.

hell I want to know why not 3betting is incorrect, you haven't given better than a half-ass argument for it.

fair enough, I'll give this a better shot in a little while. I've got some studying to do right now.

[Stacks]

kb coolman wrote:
You're raising for value here for when he folds the flop.

alright that makes sense.

hell I want to know why not 3betting is incorrect, you haven't given better than a half-ass argument for it.

fair enough, I'll give this a better shot in a little while. I've got some studying to do right now.

It's relatively simple why 3betting here is by far the best option preflop. Villain has shown (given stats) that he has loose tendencies. This generally doesn't mean just loose in raising, but also calling raises. So when we 3bet he is going to be calling a fairly large range of hands that we are still ahead of. And given that he will have position postflop, this should widen the range he will call with even more. Therefore, since a 3bet from us will be called by a large % of hands that we are ahead of, then this is an easy 3bet for value (ofc ldo ).

I do however see your logic for only calling preflop. You suspect his raising here is very wide, and that a raise from you will fold out a very large portion of his range. And while that might be true, a 3bet from us is going to be +ev now, and is still going to lead to alot of +ev spots postflop when he overvalues the weak hands he called the 3bet with.

These assumptions of villain should lead to some adjustments that our hero should make (if the assumptions hold true). Since he is calling a wide range, our 3bet bluffing range here should become more narrow, as we will be building a pot OOP against a villain who doesn't like a to fold. But we can now 3bet a wider range for value (because he still calls worse).

"IF" villain is a nit here, who is opening a decent range, but only continuing to your 3bet with a relatively narrow range, and just doesn't put in alot of money postflop without a very good hand (say he only calls 3bets here with QQ+, AK, and slows down with QQ if he doesnt hit a set). Well then I could see just calling here with your KK some % of the time. However, that is likely a relatively rare situation. But if it was the case, then you would obv increase your 3bet bluffing frequency to exploit his folding to 3bet tendencies.

[kfaess]

It's relatively simple why 3betting here is by far the best option preflop. Villain has shown (given stats) that he has loose tendencies. This generally doesn't mean just loose in raising, but also calling raises. So when we 3bet he is going to be calling a fairly large range of hands that we are still ahead of. And given that he will have position postflop, this should widen the range he will call with even more. Therefore, since a 3bet from us will be called by a large % of hands that we are ahead of, then this is an easy 3bet for value (ofc {acronym Renton hates} Very Happy).

I do however see your logic for only calling preflop. You suspect his raising here is very wide, and that a raise from you will fold out a very large portion of his range. And while that might be true, a 3bet from us is going to be +ev now, and is still going to lead to alot of +ev spots postflop when he overvalues the weak hands he called the 3bet with.

These assumptions of villain should lead to some adjustments that our hero should make (if the assumptions hold true). Since he is calling a wide range, our 3bet bluffing range here should become more narrow, as we will be building a pot OOP against a villain who doesn't like a to fold. But we can now 3bet a wider range for value (because he still calls worse).

"IF" villain is a nit here, who is opening a decent range, but only continuing to your 3bet with a relatively narrow range, and just doesn't put in alot of money postflop without a very good hand (say he only calls 3bets here with QQ+, AK, and slows down with QQ if he doesnt hit a set). Well then I could see just calling here with your KK some % of the time. However, that is likely a relatively rare situation. But if it was the case, then you would obv increase your 3bet bluffing frequency to exploit his folding to 3bet tendencies.

Stole my thunder ! lol just kidding, this is a great explanation and it definitely makes a lot of sense to me. It seems pretty simple now but when I'm playing I guess I make more mistakes than I thought.

Here is what I came up with to add to that explanation:

He raises 24% of hands, and we have 76.6% equity against those hands. So like stacks said, we want to 3-bet for value because we're so far ahead of his range.

The top 24% of hands according to poker stove is [66+,A2s+,K6s+,Q8s+,J8s+,T9s,A8o+,K9o+,QTo+,JTo]

I looked at this range and picked the hands that I thought he might continue with, and I came up with this 15.7% of pre flop hands:
[99+,A9s+,KTs+,QTs+,J9s+,T9s,A9o+,KTo+,QJo,JTo]

So by this estimation he's only folding about 1/3 of his opening range, and many of these hands were likely to fold to a flop raise anyways. 2/3 of the time we make the pot 3-4 times as big and 1/3 of the time we win his initial raise, which in many cases was all we were likely to win against these hands anyways. 2/3 of the time when he calls the 3-bet we accomplish several things IMO: we make the pot bigger so his c-bets have to be bigger and he'll probably stack off lighter given the pot size.

Seems pretty clear now that we make way more money by 3-betting.

Thanks guys I understand this much better now.

[bigspenda73]

he's folding about 0% of the hands he opened with to a 3bet

[Fnord]

he's folding about 0% of the hands he opened with to a 3bet

This and he'll sometimes put on you on AK too and give away the rest of his stack.

Raise him pre-flop.

Care to elaborate? Usually I do 3-bet but against this particular opponent I thought I could just call pre.

If I take your advice then I'd like to know the logic behind my actions and not just the correct play, otherwise I'm lost in the rest of the hand.

Well maniacs just take flops and try to bluff you out when you 3b because they put you on AK
so when you have KK they're totally fucked because you're not going anywhere and they're going to end up shoving a draw or something stupid and you're going to snap them off

most of them have like a 80% 3b call
since you can't 3b bluff them at least get value preflop with big hands