Hey Thedoors, 

 If 3bet > fold because its a bluff then 3bet >  call

I can't see why, if 3bet > fold, calling can't be > fold and > 3bet as well. Folding is a 0 ev play. If 3betting is a +1 bb play and calling is a +2 bb play, they can both be better than folding, and calling still be better then 3betting. I don't see why 3bet should necessarily always be better then calling. 

There is a recent video Phil made (which I highly recommend if you're an elite member), name Thinking out loud part 2, where he talks about how people over estimate having the initiative - which is one of the reasons I think you'd assume 3betting is always better then calling - and then he does a quick simulation of a situation where calling pre is much better than 3betting.

An interesting way to think about it is this: You need to be 3betting a balanced range overall, right ? So let's say that from the BTN vs CO, you're 3betting a 12% range, with a good ratio of value and bluffs to defend your self vs 4bets and all of that. You decide to never call, so to build that 3betting range and not be completely unbalanced towards bluffs and have a huge 25% 3bet frequency or something like that, you're gonna have to be folding some hands that could potentially be profitable 3bet bluffs. And so you are making money 12% of the time when the CO opens.

Now, what if you decided to pick some of those hands you're 3betting with that ARE good enough to call and profit (call > fold. JTs for example), started calling those, and then, to keep your 12% 3betting balanced range, you would add some other hands into your 3bet bluffing range (like K5s for example), that actually have pretty similar EV for 3betting as a bluff as the ones you were doing that with before, but that have a very different EV for calling, and cannot call profitably ?

Now you've add a, let's say, 8% calling range, and is now making money 20% of the time the CO of opens, instead of only 12%. The EV of your 3betting strategy remains pretty much the same, but you're adding another 8% of the time where you are going to be making a play (calling) that has a higher EV then folding. And that way you profit much, much more.

So that's what I mean when, in my videos, I say something like "this hand is a little to good to 3bet bluff with", and then call. 

Hey LaMenteMaestra,

Yes, I usually call all the small pocket pairs from the BB vs any position.

If, let's say, the utg opens to 3x and it's folded around to us in the big blind, we have to call 2bb into a pot of 4.5bb. We'll flop a set around 10% of the time or something like that (I don't know the exact number). So let's say we just x/f the flop 100% of the time that we don't flop a set (which isn't even true, we will sometimes win at showdown). So 90% of the time we loose 2 bbs. So, for the call to be profitable, we would need to win, on average, more than 18 bbs when we flop a set (90% of the time we loose 2 bb, 10% of the time we win 18). 4.5 bbs is already in the pot before we call pre, so we only need to win an extra 13.5 bbs after we flop a set, which I think is a very fair assumption that we do.

So what happens is that, because of selective memory, you remember that 90%~ of the time when you call pre-flop with 22-66 out of the big blind, you end up losing the pot. You enter the pot with expectations of winning (as we always do), and those expectations aren't satisfied, as you'll loose most of the times. And the fact that when you do win, you win way more than what you loose when you loose, makes it a very profitable play, but still doesn't satisfy our mind / ego / emotions, that wants to win more often than lose, independently of how much.

About calling in the SB, it is very different. In the BB we have better pot-odds and are closing the action. The fact that the BB can still squeeze us when we are in the SB and not let us even see the flop, makes a considerable diference. So it will depend on who is opening / who is in the BB a bit more when I'm in the SB. In the BB I expect the call to be profitable against pretty much every and any one.

Hi Amit,

I'm not gonna say everything that is in my hud, but a few very important things to have are "raise first in by position", "WTSD", "fold bb to sb steal / vs btn steal", "call open %", etc..

AXs is a hand that is a little bit more dependent on some other things. It's different, because you have more reverse-implied odds then with pp, you make a huge hand (flush) less often then w pp (set), and when you do make a huge hand, it's usually harder to get value then with a set, cuz of the structure of the board, etc... So I probably fold A6s vs an UTG opening 14% for example. But overall, I'll still defend most AXs from the bb.