Don't understand 3-betting to drive out limpers

This is a pretty vague question. I don’t think CLP is implying that driving out limpers is the ONLY reason to 3-bet. In general, it’s easier to play heads up and we are best off folding out multi-way equity.

What hands you opt to 3-bet in what position vs what raising opponent are factors being left out in this question.

Because AA vs the worst possible hand 72o is still only 88% to win.

Add a third player with a crappy hand like 96su and your AA is down to 71%

Add a fourth player with KQo and now you're a 58% fave.

By not raising, you're giving away your equity. Hopefully your raise is that magic amount that gets one player to call you and now you're making a pot where the KQ can hit one of their cards and pay you off a bit.

Of course, they can draw out and you'll lose sometimes. That's poker. But the raise will lower the odds that a flop of 922 hit one of your limpers.

You can also make money off of players with good hands who play them badly.

Another angle to consider, is how you make others think about your hand.
If you have 99 and I 3B, are you going to call when I CB a flop of AJ3?

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I generally do not 3B! as much as I do because I have trouble playing medium-strength (99 TT JJ KQs AQo AQs AKo AKs ) hands OPP in 3B pots, however the logic is pretty clear imo, and Deke does a good job explaining why.

1. You want to play HU or 3 people in a pot as much as possible.
2. Tightens ranges, builds pots when you should have range advantage, gives you the betting lead, gives you usually a solid tight image if your not doing it too often and with crap cards.
3. Clears up a ton of equity.

I don't know how many times I have lost a hand to V2 in a hand that I could have easily one against V1 if I had just 3 bet pre with. Those dominated ranges are still going to call you unless the opener is a nit/omc where you should already know about based on playing with them at the table for a few orbits.

Also if its a relatively new CLP episode that was at hardrock in a 2/510 game and the caller had JTdd, its because if the caller just called the open, the three EP players would have called which makes that hand value go down, and more importantly makes it much, much harder to play that had OPP in a 4 way pot.

You are going to flop huge only a tiny percentage of the time. With a large chunk of your playable hands, you are going to be left with two overcards or one pair after the flop.

Do you generally find it easier to play those sorts of hands HU on the flop or four ways?

One of the more competent players at my game opened 97o the other day and called a 5x 3-bet OOP... this is a guy I consider(ed) to be semi-aware. You're not driving anything out with 3-bets, the fish didn't drive to the casino to fold for an hour.

If no one is folding to your 3B, great, 3B with top of range hands and make the limp callers pay.

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The CLP video I saw was 2/5/10. A bad player limped, the best player at the table raised, and hero raised from the SB with TT. The comment was that you wanted to drive out the limper. Hero got stacked when the original raiser overbet shoved the river with JJ on a low board. It seemed questionable to me to build the pot, drive out the fish, and isolate versus the good player who likely has a real hand.

Results, aside - In this scenario, TT hates most flops as the majority will have an overcard. If you flat and invite limper in you are basically set mining and will have a tough time realizing equity. Deep enough this may be optimal. But most of the time, you want to deny equity to fish’s hands like K9s or weak aces or QJ for example. If H held a hand like AJs or AQs there would be a much better case for flatting and inviting limping fish in with a range that contains hands more likely to be dominated by H.

Seems like you interpreted the advice to be too generalizable.

I was watching a Hungry Horse video in which Mark was talking about being at a table of fish with a solid pro on his direct left, and Mark complained that when he'd raise the pro would often 3-bet rather than flat so that a couple of fish could join in.

I first thought he was trolling until I realized he was serious.

Equity is zero sum. For every extra hand in play, they hold some equity on flop aside form extreme edge case scenarios. This equity therefor cuts into your equity. In some situations is more detrimental in others it may be less if the pot grows large enough.

For example:
(1)
You HAVE AA vs 3 random hands and every play is all-in for $200, pot is $800
(2)
In contrast to the above, you and opponent are HU to the flop, you both put $200 in PF

EV in 1
63.9% of $800 =s $511.20
EV IN 2
85.2% of $400 =s $170.4

But this represents an extreme situation whereas real world scenarios would run much tighter on average

To be fair there is somewhat common wisdom that if "everyone" else is bad, you should flat more as an exploit vs. the fish ... but the times I've seen people recommend that are things like: Good V BTN opens; H is SB/BB and fish is the other blind.
Maybe if good V opens CO and H is on BTN and both blinds are terrible it's also better to call more.

Not sure I'd do more than that, but if you often play high stakes with only 2 or 3 good players it might be a thing that happens more to keep the fish happy and improve winrates.

Yeah, this doesn't seem great to me either. Obviously a lot of "it depends" but this seems like a decent spot to not isolate ourselves OOP to the best player, plus invite the worst player along, which also kinda handcuffs the good player from getting too out-of-line postflop.

GimoG

Calling here with a clear 3-betting hand because "I'm afraid to 3-bet the best player at the table" is simply giving away EV to our opponents.

When people limp, they put money in the pot. When they limp and then fold, they surrender the money they've already put in, sweetening the pot — a pot in which, if you're considering raising, you likely have the best hand.

EV-wise, it's actually best if they call our raise with trash hands, but getting them to muck a hand that might otherwise have won is also a good outcome.

Let me clue you in as to why hes right. Fish has QJdd, pro 1 opens, pro 2 3b and fish has to fold. Flop smashes flop and in fish logic that was supposed to be his hand to win. Pros go to showdown and fish would have won a huge pot. The 3b 4betting good online players bring to live is whats killing higher stakes games.

The more players that are in a pot, our prospects for winning decline more than our pot odds. This is particularly true if we are OOP against both players where even if we hit our hand, we will struggle to capture max value. HU, we simply have a lot more options to win a pot.

I think there is some merit in flatting in some situations to encourage fish or whales into the pot. I think that scenario has a lot more merit if we are IP against the good player, where we are the ones who will be best positioned to capitalize on the mistakes of the fish. If we are OOP and the good player is IP on everyone, well we are just tossing up the ball setting up the good player to spike it. So from the SB, I'd be inclined to 3! a chunky size with a strong range and my ideal would be that the fish calls and the good player is at the weak end of his range and folds. But I want hands that I'm ok playing HU OOP against a good player. TT definitely qualifies. If I had something like 55, then that is more of a clear flat and look to set-mine.

If H was on the button, now I think the case to flat and let the fish in as an exploitative play is a more reasonable option. Although TT specifically is kind of that middling ground where you don't really want to be set-mining, but is difficult to play post-flop on a lot of textures. I'd rather be flatting hands like KQs that have good dynamic playability post flop, as opposed to TT which is really static and has very few good flops. So even IP, I'd probably 3! TT even if it pushes the fish out. But I think an argument to flat and let the fish in has merit. Probably depends on how fishy and deep the fish is. If I'm 500bb deep against the fish and believe he will gii with 2 pair or a draw sometimes when I flop a set, by all means let him in. If we're 100bb deep, let's just try to take down the pot pre sometimes.

While all this is true (as well as all arguments regarding how our chances of winning the hand drops as more players come along), it is also a good outcome to see a flop with a bad player, who may punt huge portions of his stack to us postflop (more than making up for the fact we don't win the pot as often) versus surrendering his almost worthless single bb preflop (which we'll be fighting over with the best player at the table who has position on us). The question is really whether this is more EV than the alternatives. It's not straightforward, and there are a lots of "depends", imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG