3 betting at low stakes

Disagree with this as a blanket statement. Are you saying it’s just better to play single raised multi-way pots?

Most fish at low stakes don’t know how to appropriately respond to 3-bets. 3-betting allows you to play a ton of pots IP with a range advantage. How can that be bad?

The typical bad reg calls too wide and raises too narrow. So their limping range might include J8o and AQo. When they raise, it's typically a much tighter range. This is not universal so you have to pay attention, but defaulting to a 3-bet range based anywhere close to GTO is not correct here.

Agree. GTO is mostly irrelevant at low stakes although a useful fundamental tool used to hone exploits.

But given that 4-bet ranges are air tight, it’s still ok to 3! IP vs these players. For eg. I’d rather have KJ IP vs AQ OOP. As another eg, we print money 3-betting against these all too common fish that raise-call small-mid pairs to set mine OOP regardless of stack depth.

But yes, I wouldn’t go crazy over-3betting our suited wheel Aces against people we don’t need to be balanced against just because of solvers.

The entire OP reads like some random screed against the evils of mindlessly playing GTO, which of course no one does if they actually understand GTO.

I don't believe it's necessary to even talk about GTO here. You can establish a player's RFI range after a few showdowns. You can also assume most players at 1/2 or 1/3 will overdefend v 3bets. You want to be HU with a strong range as often as possible, particularly IP. So not 3betting TT/AQ, for instance, is likely a significant mistake, unless you some reliable information that states otherwise. Of course TT/AQ probably shouldn't be the bottom of your 3bet value range in most games, either

When you 3-bet AQ/TT in a low stakes games, there are problems in that hands that dominate those will usually flat call the 3-bet and maybe already flat called a raise. So you can lose a big bot with an overpair or TPGK to a better one pair. If you get it HU, you may isolate versus a hand even or better than yours or a decent hand that has good equity and playability.

If you call and play it multiway, there are problems. However, you get good odds to hit a set with TT and can often continue unimproved. With AQ, you keep in lots of worse aces and queens.

There's only one hand that dominates AQ that flats a 3bet, which is AK. Maybe JJ-QQ flat a 3bet versus TT. It's safe to assume KK+ is 4bet. I'm assuming that a TAG RFI's 10 from EP and 20%+ from MP-BN and will defend v a 3bet with KQs-QTs/ATs-AJs, 77-JJ a range which TT and AQ do well against. You have to keep in mind that at low stakes most overdefend vs 3bets. If you're 3betting an OMC or a genuine nit that's a different scenario, where flatting AQ & TT is likely the better play.

The 3bet situation at 1-2 live that I struggle with is vs the large 7.5x open. UTG +2 opens to $15. I 3bet to $45 +2 calls. I've succeeded in getting heads up in position however at 100bb effective we go to the flop with a fairly low SPR. Great if I flop well, easy to get the money in. When I miss tho, I don't know how to proceed.

You play poker. One of two things usually happens - either Vs are overdefending and have too many garbage hands, or they are underdefending and have very tight ranges when they call.

If the former, sure you missed, but they probably missed too, and with a weak range, they will fold too frequently to even small c-bets. These types of players will often play very passively and even if you check back flop, they will check to you on the turn if they also missed. You can have a mix of c-bets and delayed c-bets depending on board texture.

If the latter, you'll be picking up a lot of $20-$30 pots, so when you are called tread softly. Give them credit for a strong pre-flop hand, and be aggressive when you beat strong pre-flop hands. Slow down when you can't, especially if the board is good for strong pre-flop hands.

It's ok to 3-bet then give up when you whiff the flop if you have good reason to believe V hit it. Even when you have the stronger range, you're going to lose like 40-45% of the time if the cards were face up. Sometimes you'll have those days where you lose a whole buy-in on nothing but 3-bet pots that you just missed and had no path to win. It's frustrating. Dealing with that frustration is probably the most important poker skill to develop.

Most live poker players are bad at playing 3-bet pots because they don't 3-bet often themselves. So they aren't experienced with them and tend to either play them too timidly or too aggressively. Once you figure out which way their tendency is, exploit it until they learn. If you develop your ability to identify when to be aggressive and when to slow down in 3! pots, you'll win more than you "should", and that means you'll still lose 30-35% of the time.

The thing is when you do this you're essentially playing a 4 bet pot, not a 3 bet pot.

Well said!
Until they start 4Betting, they are helpless

Someone said they over-defend and that’s because they want to see a flop. But what wasn’t said is that they mostly go away after donating unless they smash the flop.

3bet in position
Check-raise out of position
Two of the most valuable tools in poker.

You can’t fix Passive!

The most profitable spot in poker is HU in position against a rec. If you cant accomplish that then abort the mission. If a pro opens in the HJ and a fish calls in the CO be very wary attempting to iso the fish with a 3bet. They were fine calling 5BB's pre but not necessarily 15. The pro will most likely 4bet/fold and the fish is just gone anyway so you're not getting to build pots to bluff/value bet with. Seat selection will be key here.

OP is correct.

You have to consider Vs ranges and if he has a wide limping range you have to be more careful when you 3! his raises

If someone is raising 54s 85s and 33 you can 3! 88 largely for value. If they are limping 99 and AQ not so.

But also, don't use this as an excuse to be too passive or to play scared.

It's like any other play in that you look for the situation to use it.

Against a $15 open by a tight player in 1/2, your 3b range should be tight and linear.

Against a $7 open by a player who pfr's often, you'll either expand the bottom of your 3b range for value (vs those who call 3bets loose) or have a polarized 3b range (vs those who fold too much).

These games are a total zoo. I frankly don't know how anyone makes any generalizations about low stakes for a single casino at a certain time of day, much less for the entire internet consuming public to apply to whatever games they happen to play.

I agree that anyone who defines "standard ranges" as what the chart says to do because the OR was 2 away from the button or whatever is way off. I would honestly look at that as first and foremost a problem of looking at the wrong chart to begin with, much less taking the wrong lessons from that chart, much much less a fundamental problem of consulting solutions at all.

I also agree that *as far as you can generalize exploitabilities*, they tend to be too passive and take aggressive action with too strong a range, and that will certainly put heavy downward pressure on your re-raise frequency. There are also more spots where mix 3b/flats become pure flats due to the number of fish left to act. No one should be 3bing the 10% standard you see in 6m online games (nor is anyone really recommending that AFAICT).

That being said, I would not say JJ/AK is the range. Honestly, in the rare situations where I'm pure flatting AQs, I'm probably flatting a lot of JJ/QQ/AK. And you have to actually, like, study to figure this stuff out and not just selectively list some common (but not universal factors) that rationalize the approach you already take and are comfortable with.

Fish make massive mistakes facing 3b at low stakes. They will call OOP with dominated hands like KQo, AJo, A5s, etc; They will 4b to face-up sizings with AA and KK, allowing you to play QQ, JJ, and AK perfectly; They will fold high-equity hands when deep-stacked because "they just always have it at low stakes"; They will set-mine with pocket pairs with zero depth behind.

Learn which players you can and can't 3b light in your player pool and good things will happen.

I'm not confident I know the best 3bet strategy in 1/2 or 1/3 games, not least because one table can have different dynamics to another (e.g. how often players RFI, how often they fold). Generally, there are fewer play-for-profit recs than 2/5 and this fact is significant because play-for-profit-recs are more aware of what constitutes a 3bet range and how to defend versus one (what to fold, what to call, what to 4bet).

I can say that at 1/2 or 1/3 you can exploit players who:

• only 4bet KK+
  
• defend too wide versus a 3bet
  
• overfold to a 3bet
  
• cold-call 3bets
  
• don't recognise the difference between a 3bet from OOP v IP
  
• don't recognise the relevance of stack-depth
  

All of the above is what we should be thinking about, plus a few other things I can't think of right now, rather than an oversimplification such as "1/3 players are too tight and/or call too much so we can't 3bet them wide" .

The most important thing to do is to hand range the Villains. To do well at ranging them effectively, we need to be collecting info. How do we do that?

1. Watch showdowns obsessively to see what hole cards that he had after Villain raised preflop for XYZ sizing. This is the bread and butter. Maybe take notes too.

2. Persuade/manipulate Villain into showing his hole cards, so we can see what hole cards that he raised XYZ size preflop. You would be surprised how often that players will show their hole cards if you open your mouth.

3. Ask a friendly player about what he thinks Villain's raising range is. You would be surprised how much info that you can uncover sharing info with friendly players.

I could go on and on about various ways to collect info.

Now that we have a game plan on how to do the preflop ranging...let's move to the next step.

What are we going to do about his range?

DrTJO mentioned various leaks that different Villains might have (very nice summary DrTJO). Let's try to figure out what those leaks are and then come up with good exploits to crush them. Some of those good exploits will probably involve us 3betting a range wider than AKs/QQ+.