I am currently studying c-betting strategies in 3-bet pots. In order to do so, I ran sims in GTO+ for different positions across a large range of flops and I'm summarizing patterns. At first, I try to separate boards that lead to (i) range c-bets vs. (ii) selective c-bets vs. (iii) range checks as the 3-bettor.

One thing I just cannot get my head around is the behavior of the 3-bettor on low flops, that is unpaired boards that are 9-high and lower. The paired variety of these boards (e.g. 744) allow the 3-bettor to continue betting large portions of his range since this flop interconnects poorly with both players' ranges for most positions and the 3-bettor's pre-flop advantage is preserved. When unpaired, these boards in general tend to favor the preflop caller as pre-flop calling ranges are made up of a significantly higher portion of hands like 77-22, 87s, 76s, 65s, 54s etc. when compared to 3-betting ranges. So in general, the c-betting frequency goes down a lot. So far so good.

Below you see the betting frequencies on 26 different boards. When I split the picture up for 3-betting out of position or in position, we seem to c-bet selectively/polarized with a higher betting frequency both in position and oop for boards where equities are more neutral and provide large portions of our range with (backdoor) straight draws (9-high, 98x). This makes perfect sense to me.

However, on the very lowest boards we c-bet selectively out of position and range check in position after 3-betting?? Why is this the case? Why are we more incentivized to continue barrelling when being in a positional disadvantage? Shouldn't we be more incentivized to bet when in position, since we produce way more fold equity, have more possibilities for pot control etc. I didn't even know range checks in position were a thing to be honest.

Out of position (example: BB 3-bet vs. BU RFI):

Note: Colums depict percentage of time GTO+ elects to bet 50%, 30% or to check. Boards are sorted by checking frequency.

In position (example: BU 3-bet vs. CO RFI)

Note: Colums depict percentage of time GTO+ elects to bet 50%, 30% or to check. Boards are sorted by checking frequency.