[2-4]: Back2back blind bet blind battling blind

Seems fine. Call river. Not going to worry about what blind bets mean.

Preflop is a pure 3b.

Blind bets tilt strong, but obviously you're not folding a hand you borderline slowplayed the first two streets with.

I also think the non-standardness of this hand coming from the facts that 1) they don't seem like a rec, 2) it's BvB (is chopping standard?) and 3) the board is almost as dead as possible make this a potentially exceptional spot where I'd temper my priors a bit.

We can't fold now, and I guess we'll find out what betting blind means for him. Betting the river blind is kind of weird with the board being rather dynamic on the turn.

Backing up, the real problem is that V has everything. We've done nothing to narrow his range, and he has ATC. That makes it really hard to determine if he flopped nutted with say 77 or is just barreling off with something like Axdd.

Blind vs blind, I'd 3! this all day long.

I don't think there's much merit in raising the flop because we want to keep his bluffs in, but the turn should be raised because:

1: V easily picked up any number of draws that we could get value from like Axdd, Qxdd, 54dd, T9, 98, Q9 etc. Almost any two connectors/gappers has at least a gutshot.
2: If V has a monster, we'll find out because of the FD we could be semi-bluffing, he is likely to just jam and we can fold.
3: If V calls and checks river, we have a green light to value bet targeting a weaker Kx.
4: Most importantly, we force V to make a decision that will reveal something about his hand. We are completely blind OTR because V was driving the whole time. Since we never bet, we're in this no-mans land where V could have anything from the nuts to complete air.

I would not 3! in the US, because it is usually chopped and SB could limp. KQo is not ahead of the range someone would raise with.

In cash I generally don't 3bet a range I don't know with non-premium hands. Which may be sacrificing some EV for less variance I guess. But yeah as long as I have no idea what he's raising with, I don't want to 3bet it.

No, usually only the regs chop; when you're vs someone you don't know, you generally play. And two of the regs also refuse to chop.

Yea, I don't dislike raising the Turn at all. I think I didn't consider it mostly just because the weirdness of the bet made me default to the timid play.

I'm pretty skeptical more passive / flat heavy strats lead to less variability. Nothing's lower variance than not having to see a flop.

In any case, I guess it depends what you mean by premium and an unknown range, but this is likely sacrificing pretty substantial EV. Which obviously probably isn't worth reducing variance in itself, but also defeats the purpose of reducing variance. IE: even if your graph is less variable, you still end up with at least as many parts of it below 0.

would guess in most non hs pools you could 3b 100% of continuing range pre in the bb if you wanted. im not necessarily advocating that but if u look at opening ranges and then call 3b / 4b ranges i doubt random 75 bb casino goer blind betting big streets is going to get close. you could make it 20 pre if you really wanted to troll

i doubt his postflop line is particularly strong

The decision to chop is made before either player looks at their cards. KQo is well ahead of a SB raising range unless the player in the SB is a passive fish, but if V is a passive fish then we shouldn't have an issue playing a 3! pot IP because a passive fish isn't going to 4! nearly enough (v should 4! roughly 20% of the time in this config), will overfold and will probably play passive post flop too.

I just don't get the fear, Vs aren't going to 4! appropriately let alone light. KQo is easily folded if we run into a big premium that does 4!. If V does have AA/KK/AK, he might 4! and we have an easy fold. We lose WAY less 3!/f than flatting and calling down with KQo when we're utterly dominated.

Say V is only raising super premiums here. We 3! to $30, he 4!s and we fold. We lose $30. As it is, we called and hit enough to call flop, turn and river for $90 and we still lose to AA/KK/AK. We lose 3x more because we didn't 3!.

The only good reason not to 3! KQo is if we believe that V will 4! hands like KJ, Q9, or 88 and blow us off our equity. Vs at these stakes aren't doing that.

You can 3! fold, it isn't like Vs are suddenly going to start 4! bluffing.

Premium basically is QQ-AA

The problem / general-case-for-caution is that imE, a substantial portion of unknown players limp most of their hands, so if they open-raise, it's actually a pretty strong range. And they don't always 4bet their monsters if you 3bet, so the "3betting is cheaper because 3bet-folding costs fewer chips than flatting" argument doesn't always work. It's possible to 3bet a passive player, get flatted by KK, flop top pair and then value-own yourself for three streets.

But granted that doesn't completely apply here because I've seen him open-raise a somewhat normal amount of times. So I was probably too cautious here and could have just 3bet the KQ.

That's ok because if we 3! and they call, that tells us they have a strong hand. Now, if V donks flop and donks turn, we know we're against a monster. Especially if we conclude that the player pool still has AA/KK/AK. In a 3! pot, if V is showing aggression and we don't have reason to believe he's a maniac, we can fold KQ. In a SRP, V is completely rational if he thinks that KT or K9 is good here.

I'm not going nuts after 3!ing just because I bink TPGK. If all the money goes in, we're losing. So I might bet small on the flop, check back turn, and bluffcatch/value bet river. I'm going to start sizing up if I hit trips or 2p. The main benefit is we gain better control over what size the pot is going to be on future streets when we 3! early because Vs will check the flop more frequently and will check the turn more frequently when we are taking actions that are consistent with us having a big hand. By forcing V into a situation that should be played cautiously, then we can simply fold if V doesn't play cautiously. And when V does play cautiously, then we can dictate whether the bets are big, medium or small, and check back to control the pot when appropriate. And with TPGK in a 3! pot, controlling the pot a little is usually the right decision.

KQo is not ahead of the SB raising range huh? Interesting take. Horribly wrong, but very interesting.

Respectfully and certainly not aiming this at you but seeing flops increases variance because people are awful at post-flop poker.

As played obviously just call. Not going to think too much about what ''blind bets'' mean.

I think it's good to have a baseline for how narrow players' raise ranges are likely to be and ensure your 3b strat is good against that. Even if someone's raise range is the top 10% of hands, you should be 3bing 50% more than 2.5% (QQ+/AK) out of the blinds and twice as wide IP. I don't think you need to be folding KJs IP facing a single raise or AQs in the SB just because someone's unknown (and flatting KJs in the HJ-/SB because the OR's range is opaque is not going to get you in less trouble than 3bing).

Assuming our opponent isn't an obvious backpack reg, haven't been active so far, it didn't fold to the button/blinds, etc, I'll assume 15% and happily fold AQo/88 to a single raise in the SB. But by the same token, as a standard (they're not 80+, didn't raise huge, they haven't shown AQ in a limped pot, etc), I'm not assuming an unknown player's raise range is tighter than 15%.

(Maybe it is slightly tighter than that, IDK, that's not necessarily my point. I think that's the right neighborhood and your strategy should flow naturally from whatever it is.)

I think this is a better framework for navigating a probablistic game of incomplete information than very discrete approaches where you go from only 3bing premiums to suddenly having *just* enough information to start 3bing KQo. For that reason, I'd actually feel more comfortable if you'd said that you haven't gotten enough informational input to assume they have the ~40% effective range they should here, and so KQo is in the top of your flatting range than the reasoning you actually gave 😃

When I blind bet it’s usually at low SPR in a spot where I have a good but vulnerable hand but feel committed.

That doesn’t apply here. My guess is he has a good but not great hand, something like ours. Wouldn’t be surprised if he shows up with AK or 7dd but I doubt he has air.

Call of course.

Reveal:

Kind of a weird blind bet on his part, he could have really sized up on that turn and instead probably won the minimum.

If we had 3! to say 30€ (no reason to size up blind vs blind you could even size down to 25€) we go to the flop with 60€.

If V donks after we 3! and flatting, it's more confusing. I'm probably raising with the intent of raising and being done. So V bets 30€ click it to 60€ and see what he does. Folding to any aggression and looking to check down and win sometimes against QQ. We lost around 90€ in that line.

If he checks, we bet 20€, and if he raises, I think we can make a disrespectful fold against most of the population because what is he bluffing with? Is he turning A5/44 into a bluff like a solver would? No. Is he turning AQss or AQhh into a bluff (which he doesn't have in solverland, but a live V probably has it), I doubt it. Is he raising KJ for value like a solver would? No. I think it's a safe assumption that most live Vs aren't finding enough bluffs here and are never x/r for value with worse. We lose 50€ in that line.

If V flats the 20€, I'm checking turn looking to bluffcatch or value bet river. I think with his hand he is leading river nearly 100% if we check back turn. So we have 100€ in the pot so if he bets 60-70€ I'm probably calling. We lose about 120€ in that line.

If V does find a check OTR, then in my head I'm targeting a hand like QQ or AJ so I'm sizing where I think those hands make a crying call. Maybe 40€ . If he raises easy fold (same logic as on the flop, live Vs don't get here with bluffs often enough and aren't x/r for value with worse). We lose about 90€ in that line

Versus the line that we took, we lose less if he gets aggressive and raises tipping us off to the strength of his hand. If he slow plays all the way to the river we lose a chunk more. We lose something roughly similar in a lot of lines because our hand is moderate value and we aren't going to press it hard and we don't really need to call off against the average player (obviously, everything is different if we're against a whale or maniac). Putting in 20bb is really a ballpark where TPGK is comfortable and is probably winning often enough, and when you lose, whatever you lost a modest amount with a decent hand, that isn't an error. If the pot starts swelling more than that, then TPGK starts becoming very marginal unless you're playing a spewy player. If you end up all-in then you're punting.

I think there's an inherent assumption that the pot necessarily gets bigger with a 3! pot, but often it doesn't. What a 3! pot does is it provides the player who is IP the optionality of making it a huge pot. The player who is OOP has to deal with the reality that the IP player can make a big bet and really start bloating the pot while still offering pot odds that are difficult to get away from. At lower stakes, live players don't deal well with the constant threat that the pot could get huge. They make more mistakes, and they tend to become overly skewed towards value if they make any aggressive choices. If they are overly skewed towards value, that makes our life easier because we can fold to aggression - they simply don't have enough bluffs and aren't betting thin for value. And if we are IP, we get to decide if our hand wants to play a huge pot or a modest one. TPGK falls into the modest side. Say we turn 2p, well now we can bloat the pot and get greedy because the AA/AK that missed the 4! is paying us off for stacks, and since we 3!, we can follow a very natural sizing to ease it all in. That optionality is why 3! pots IP are great, and why they kind of suck when your OOP.

In this case, I think ultimately we get a similar amount of money in the pot, but when it goes in gives us more control, more information, and provides the opportunity for us to make a disrespectful fold in some scenarios or a perfectly theoretical fold if he 4!s and lose a little less. He needs to play in a rather specific way in order to extract more from us because TPGK is essentially good SDV in a 3! pot, it isn't a barreling hand for value or as a bluff.

Generally I view blind bets as weakness tells. They're trying to look strong. The sizing seems to align with bluffiness.

Our hand seems too strong to fold but not strong enough to raise, so I'd mostly just call.

Interesting reveal, in that it should lower our opinion of his skill as a player. He left a good bit of money on the table.

Right, should do some

Reflecting (not sure what yet, but I usually want to figure out some kind of takeaway when I post a hand):

I guess it's just being less afraid of raising. If raising is in the conversation for being better when opponent has AA, then it's probably better most of the time. No one says I have to pile the money in if I get called. And worst case I cbet the flop, check Turn, and call a bet on the River. Now I do lose more but still not a crazy amount.

Yeah, a lot of the room to use your skill in poker is hand-reading, and this is difficult with maximally passive lines. If villain bets 3 times, that does say something about his range, but much less than anything he does in response to a raise. I should be looking for opportunities to put opponents into more difficult spots if they make reasonable sense, and they did here. I have a pretty strong tendency to just call when I have value and am in position, and should probably relax that.

Yep, noted.