Hi guys,

I've never seen this proposed/discussed before, if anyone has any links to discussion of it they would be appreciated!

My proposal is merging our ~3x 3betting range and calling ranges into one smaller min-2.5x 3betting range when we are in the HJ facing an UTG open. If it is correct to do so here it might be the case that it is elsewhere as well, but this seems like the place where the arguments for are most potent so it would have to be right here before it could be right somewhere else.

I'm not going to try to make a full argument here because I haven't developed one yet, but I wanted to list some pros/cons and say how important I thought they all were.

PROs:
We put more money into the pot in position with a stronger range. Typically UTG is opening considerably wider than we can coldcall an UTG open, so when continuing against an UTG open why not make a 3bet our standard?
We do a better job of reaching the part of the gametree where UTG and HJ are splitting the blinds. If we coldcall we invite other players into the pot and more often reach a part of the gametree where UTG and HJ are splitting the blinds with one+ other players. The points here are a person considering a coldcall: a) has to coldcall 2+ more bbs than they would otherwise (yeah I'm talking a really small 3bet here) and b) cannot ever close the action as UTG still has the option to 4bet. This seems extremely relevant to me because winning or defending the blinds is the obvious goal of a preflop strategy.
We probably force UTG to play a little tighter, giving ourselves more spots to profitably RFI since we can RFI wider than we can defend vs an UTG RFI. This seems minimally important.
We will always have all of our premiums so we will be much more able to create polarized ranges to bet with postflop, and betting in position is really good.
As a complement to the previous point, we will also very regularly be checked to on the flop because we have all of our premiums, which greatly diminishes the part of the gametree where we face three bets from UTG.

CONs:
We get slightly less money into the pot with our premiums preflop(?). I am not actually sure that this is true, there is still a 4bet/5bet/jam section of the gametree and if anything UTG is incentivized to enter it more often here.
We may end up not actually being able to play as wide as we would with separate 3betting and calling ranges because we do not have room for hands which are intended as pure 3bet-bluffs. On the other hand we may be able to 3bet hands which were previously 3bet-bluffs for value since we have a wider range to support them (hands like AJo for example).
Players behind us are more incentivized to 4bet which may hurt us.
We don't have as much preflop fold equity when 3betting because our 3bets are smaller and our range is wider. On the other hand we have more than we did when we were calling.

I think that the fact that we give UTG the option to 4bet every time is actually a pro because it makes it much harder for players behind us to continue.

I am interesting in hearing opinions. I know a lot of people 3bet very little against UTG opens and I've seen extremely winning pros arguing for having no 3betting range at all against UTG opens in some positions, I don't see why it couldn't also be correct to only 3bet and have no calling range in this particular scenario with four people left to act. It's a little like the SB vs BTN scenario except all the arguments for having no calling range are considerably magnified (we're IP so bloating pot is good and getting folds increases the chances we'll continue to be IP, there are four people behind instead of one, there is more money in the blinds to be won because we haven't added dead money, we have a tighter range so keeping premiums at 100% frequency is relevant more often, etc. etc. etc.).