25NL HH Line Check - What Do You Think About Cbetting This Flop as OOP 3bettor?

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25NL HH Line Check - What Do You Think About Cbetting This Flop as OOP 3bettor?

Hi ROI community,

What are your thoughts on my flop Cbet from this 6max 25NL game? Standard? Do you have checks here as OOP 3bettor and if so, what range? What are your thoughts on the sizing? Would you use a different sizing? If so, why?

In game, it seemed that this flop is relatively neutral in terms of range advantage. I am wondering if it makes sense to Cbet part of my 3bet range and check other parts. Thank you for your insight.

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RaoulFlush 4 years, 8 months ago

We should have a more polar 3betting range in these positions pre. That said: We have a lot less Qx in our range as if we would 3bet BU or SB: flatting QTo, Q9s, QJo and KQo beside some AQo.
While Villain is flatting most of his Qx combos here ip beside A3/A5s that we also might just flat pre.
So rangeadvantage has switched to CO fair a bit.
So i would tend to X or bet bigger in this spot and would choose high equity backdoors for bluffing.
Therefore you XF on a J (decent card for your range) i guess you are cbetting too whide here.

XIXDANMANXIX 4 years, 8 months ago

Thanks for the reply Raoul,

Good point about the top pair disadvantage that CO will have more Qxs in flatting range. I have 2 follow up questions for you:

(1) I understand your comment that we should 3bet more polar to mean we are incentivized to just call CO's RFI rather than 3bet because as BB, we close the action preflop and are laid a price from the dead blind. But because we are 4 handed and CO is likely opening a standard 30%-ish of hands, shouldn't we respond by 3betting CO's wide range with a wider linear range for? While I agree that QTo and Q9s would certainly play as calls from the BB, because of the short handed nature, I think BB can (depending on CO's stats) still have KQs/KQo/QJs in preflop 3bet range. No?

(2) Despite BB having more Qx than AQ in range, I agree that CO will have slightly more combos of Qx in his range as the RFI/caller. But isn't alot, if not all, of CO's top pair advantage offset by the fact that BB has all 12 combos of AA and KK and CO's range is at least discounted if not capped with respect to these over pairs? In other words, CO will have a few more Qx than BB, but BB will have more AA and KK. This seems like it would shift any range advantage/disadvantage back to neutral or make it very close.

I agree and appreciate your thinking with respect to the X or bet bigger OTF when we have a disadvantage - but it doesn't seem like we do....

Spoiler: I was 3betting relatively polar and held AKo.

RaoulFlush 4 years, 8 months ago

You are pretty welcome, i love talking about hands :)

1) We should be whidening our valuerange vs a whider openingrange. But the hands you mentioned seem all pretty close to non profit:

KQs vs 30%: 54.5%
KQo : 52%
QJs: 48%

They all should be 3bet with some frequency, but its not slamdunk for value. Tbh. we are rarely realising the given value too often, because we are oop. So there is other merits and reasons for 3betting those hands beside straight value.
The reason why we dont go for linear 3betting here is mostly, because we dont have too:
If we are sitting at BU a hand like AJo becomes simply not strong enough to call and then call a SQ. Thats the reason why we turn our weakest Valuehands into bluffs in this spot and 3bet them. But if we would also 3bet every 45s or KTo here, our 3betting range would explode and so we simply fold them.
This risk is not given in the SB and we can therefore simply flat AJo and now start to 3betbluff stuff like 45s.

2) You are somewhat right: We have QQ+ (18 combos)...but thats it...
Q9s+, QJo+ is already 56 combos. + Villain has the other 2 sets which we dont. But it could be right that the equitys run kind of neutral. But that just underlined my argument to bet (heavilly) polarized here i would say, because so many hands in between dont gain value by betting.

About the spoiler: I dont get this. You bet small OTF and therefore keep Villains range superwhide and then XF a card that hits your range and your hand that decent? What was your reasoning for this line?

XIXDANMANXIX 4 years, 8 months ago

Here is the reasoning on the result:

  1. We are doing a range 33%-35% PSB Cbet on that board. The flop is so dry that it creates a "way ahead way behind" dynamic where either BB or CO is a huge favorite and the other is dead to basically 2-5 outs. In these types of spots we either want to be checking or betting small because opponent can easily play perfectly against a large bet - and we go with the small bet option because the pot is bloated from the 3bet.

The small sizing works well on this type of board for entire range:

Polar bluffs (45s, A2s, etc): Allows us to stab with combos that cannot win at showdown targeting the part of CO's range that completely missed flop, but would win at showdown if we both went unimproved (and denies some equity from this part of CO's range). But most importantly, the sizing allows us to make this stab profitably as it only has to get through about 25% of the time to break even.

Value (AA, KK, etc..) drags along CO's wide range where he doesn't have the right equity and allows us to play play a big pot on later streets.

Linear/Merge (AK, AJs, 44 etc..), admittedly this part of our 3bet range benefits the least from taking this line OTF, but 2 things to consider:
1. We start becoming exploitable if we only check OOP this part of our range and CO can start betting 50% PSB OTF with any two cards when we check to him and we have to fold. Even worse, CO can start calling our 3bet with his entire RFI range looking for our check OTF to take it down (as this part of range has to check/fold).

  1. Even combos like AKo benefit from firing small OTF because it takes away CO's ability to turn his snap folds into bluffs. If you think CO has QTo here, he likely has hands like JTs that have to fold to any bet, but are also happy to take a shot if 3bettor appears to be giving up. The reality is both CO and BB should have relatively wide ranges as it is 4 handed on the Q53r and because of that, both CO and BB have a ton of airballs in their respective ranges that cannot continue in a 3bet pot against any bet.

Long story short - I am taking this line with range and I just so happened to be in the exact spot within my range where the line may not appear advantageous on its face.

Are you suggesting bifurcating your BB preflop 3bet range between either (i) checks; or (ii) large flop bets? I am not sure that is a flop you want to be large on.

RaoulFlush 4 years, 8 months ago

So i ran a sim about this spot and seem to be pretty wrong about my thoughts.
I assigned somewhat loose ranges for both position and GTO+ still likes your rangebet OTF.
However...still dont really get the XF OTT.
blue: 1/3 bet
purple: 2/3 bet

Flopplay:

Turnplay:

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