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Oh, and no one really answered your question about whether to play this hand. It depends on the table and a tiny little bit on the dynamics. Important things to note with this specific hand are:
It's gonna suck to play when there are aggressive players to your left. This is very often a fold at higher stakes just because you might often have multiple players to your left who 3b a lot preflop (though it should be players who 3b EP opens a lot; if it's mostly just resteals and squeezes and COvBU and such, then obviously it's not as much of a concern). It's also going to suck against players who flat a lot preflop and then play aggressively post. Even if it's a fish, they're exploiting you with THIS SPECIFIC HAND when they flat pre with the intention of raising/floating/etc a lot post. Sure, we might get a set every so often, but we likely won't get their stack when we do, and they'll win a lot of small and medium-sized pots that doesn't make it worth it.
And then who is in the blinds is a huge factor. Ideally, you want either players who call too much preflop and then play fit or fold postflop, or you want players who way overcommit themselves to mediocre hands. The former is especially good when you have tight players on your left so that you're kind of preemptively iso'ing someone with exploitable tendencies. You can take down a lot of small pots, and then whenever you commit serious money to the pot, you're doing it with a nut hand.
It's ideal to PFR bigger in these situations (and steal on the flop for as cheap as you can get away with) to maximize their mistake of calling preflop. This also makes it easier to build a pot postflop for when we hit against a player who doesn't necessarily go bananas with mediocre hands. If you're at a table that's pretty loose and splashy preflop, then having this type of player in the blinds isn't that appealing.
Against the latter player (players who overcommit to mediocre hands), it's always nice to have position on them with hole cards with nutty potential for obvious reasons. If there's a 30/10 with a 20% F2CB whom you've seen c/c multiple streets with second pair in the BB (and you think they lean heavily toward calling raises in the BB), for example, then the only time we don't want to raise is if there's a reason you think you might not be seeing the flop (eg: 3b'ors to your left, loose players to your left with a squeezer in the SB, etc). Or also if they're shortstacked, obviously.
In these situations, we want to raise smaller to keep the SPR as large as possible to really maximize on their postflop exploitabilities. A common scenario live, for example, is to have a bunch of players to your left who are passive but love to see the flop, and then have a fish in the blinds who hates to fold their BB and overcommit to mediocre hands, so it is very often a good play to min-open with a hand like this from EP. It is very important to note that when we do this, we're basically surrendering any chance of having strong initiative; players won't put us on a strong hand when we do a "juicer," and the hand's likely gonna end up multi-way anyway with us not necessarily having great position postflop. To help you form a range in this situation, having weak initiative is terrible with a hand like 76s, for example. I guess you could call it a power limp. You're just making it that much less likely that you get raised preflop, while still building the pot enough that you can get stacks in comfortably when you hit.
Another common scenario to open this hand 3 from the button is when everyone to your left is tight. If at a FR table you have an 8/7, a 12/10 with 3% 3b and a 15/5 with 65% F2CB to your left, then you will be stealing good position with a preflop raise so often, that you effectively have the HJ (or maybe even CO) seat, in which case a raise would be pretty standard. I loathe to say something like "Now you can refer to the handchart and see that 55 would be an open from HJ, and since you effectively have the HJ, just raise raise raise 100% of the time in this situation," but for simplicity's sake, I'll just say that I have to strain to think of a situation (stack sizes, players in the blinds, etc) where I wouldn't raise with those types of players keeping me from the button.
Sizing might depend (see above to see a couple of examples of how it would differ from my "standard" sizing), but for example, if both of the blinds are regs and we're 100bb effective, then I would probably just go with my standard raise from that position, which would probably be 3bbs at that particular table. Since the two players to my right are so tight, they are likely the type who will be laying their blinds down so much that I'll be min-opening the button ~100%, and then when I'm in the CO, all 3 players left to act will be tight, so I'll probably be going for cheap steals (2.5bbs) from there too with close to 40%+ of my hands, and then I'll feel more comfortable playing a bit looser from MP and EP than I usually am (this hand is an example), so I'll probably be opening no more than 3bbs from any position. This is fine with this hand, not just from a balance standpoint (I would be doing the same with AQ+, and my range from this early is strong even when I'm loosening a bit), but also from an exploitation standpoint (players this tight are generally in set mine or fold mode, so they're not much adjusting to PFR sizes and calling wider to smaller opens).
Hope that's a good start.
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Bet sizing question--drawing value from monster hands
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Originally Posted by TNreg
