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2NL 6max PF 3-bet Ranges

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  1. #1

    Default 2NL 6max PF 3-bet Ranges

    I was wondering what you thought of my 3-bet ranges I have been using lately? It is a cut-n-paste job, but seems pretty solid, and has worked well as of yet. I'm guessing I am missing a few opportunities that may be appropriate for current foundation portion of our little "build-a-profitable -poker-player" experiment. I add position bluffs here and there from button and the rare squeeze play, when I see the open raiser has a habit of opening. So there is a high probability that he is weak, plus caller showed weakness also by only calling, giving me a prime time for an squeeze play attempt. I also will 3-bet weak from SB and BB if CO and BU are getting pushy. But what you will see below are my staple 3-betting against ranges, based on what position the open raise comes from.

    Defending ranges against the position the raise came from:

    UTG:{KK+, AKs}

    MP:{QQ+, AQ+}

    CO:{JJ+, AQ+}

    BU:{TT+, AQ+}

    SB:{99+, AQ+}

    What are your thoughts of my PFR defense?
  2. #2
    It's all relative and depends on who raised, your reason for 3betting (value or bluff), villain's tendency to call/4b/fold, position, etc.

    For example, if a villain, who after 4k hands is only raising 1% of his hands, opens from MP, are you 3betting KK and AKs for value? What about when villain opens, regardless of position, folds to 3bets 80% of the time? Or, if villain on the button opens, has a steal % of 50+ but rarely folds to re-steals, what does your 3bet range look like? Hint: there are no bluffs.

    In general, I would recommend 3betting straight value hands (ie: TT+, AK) until you are comfortable playing 3bet pots with marginal hands when called. It will keep you out of trouble while you learn how to master those spots and build your confidence when playing larger pots postflop.
  3. #3
    MadMojoMonkey's Avatar
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    Something about babies and bathwater, Star.

    You're right that there is a ton of information missing to give adequate analysis on his suggested ranges. I think the discussion about that alone is worthy of a thread, so it's all good to me.

    You're right that the suggested ranges have not been explicitly justified against a range. However, I assume that Mcash is assuming his own opening ranges (or perhaps my suggested opening ranges from another thread).

    ***
    @Mcash: is this assumption correct?
    It's not a bad idea to include those ranges in this thread, either way.

    Hey, you brought up GTO recently. This is a great place to apply game theory thinking!
    As Star pointed out, you didn't provide enough info to choose your ranges against Villain. Yes, we're talking about your ranges vs. 1 villain in different positions, not your ranges vs. different positions. In the short term, you can crudely assume this is fine for all Villains, but in a day or so of thinking about this, you'll see that is inadequate to understand what you're getting at.

    We need to consider pot odds, and Villains % to fold, call and raise.
    If Villain's ranges are imbalanced w.r.t. GTO, then we may be able to print monies with a simple bet/fold strategy. Since we will not always be behind, that sets a minimum of value we may achieve.

    Can you find the calc. which tells you how to determine this?
    I know spoonitnow wrote articles on the topic of the (0, 1) game, aka the Von Neumann poker model.
    This calculation is essential to that model, so it will help if you're at least familiar with the terms, if not fluent in the math.

    GTO exists when it is disadvantageous for either player to change their strategy. This means that if BOTH players are playing a GTO strategy, then there is nothing either can do to increase their profits. That is to say, neither player can do anything MORE than what they're already doing to exploit the other. All they can do is open a leak for their opponent to exploit.

    Another interpretation of this is that if your opponent isn't playing GTO, then you should not be, either. When your oppoenent is not playing GTO, you can make advantageous adjustments to your play to increase your profits. These adjustments will always be a move away from GTO, so they will be (theoretically) exploitable holes in your game. The vitally important point here is that you open these holes intentionally when you KNOW that your opponents is NOT taking advantage of that opportunity to exploit you.

    ***
    Not for nothing, but you're quickly getting to the point where you need to know all about equity calculations.
    Again, spoonitnow wrote a series of articles on how to do this and he is good at breaking things down into a step-by step process.

    Here's a link to part of it. There's much more, but I didn't have the time to track it down.

    Basically, anything written by spoonitnow is worth reading. Sadly, past tense. He's not writing for FTR anymore, but he left us with a Boaty McBoatface load of gold.
    (I say that despite the condescension he regularly showed me in the FTR Community forum.)
    Last edited by MadMojoMonkey; 06-27-2017 at 11:42 AM.

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