facing 3b pf small pocket pairs

well, you often don't fold to cbets 😉

I think a lot of the value from small pocket pairs comes from just making a set against a strong 3-bet range and winning a big pot. Positional advantage is also pretty huge. You can float a lot and either get to showdown or sometimes turn your hand into a bluff.

Solvers also call down quite far with pairs, as you are either doing a good job bluff catching (vs equilibrium frequencies from the preflop aggressor) or you are not facing that high of a cbet frequency.

There are so many scenarios and different ways to configure these sims, and the answer's a bit different for each.

Pocket pairs are very high in hand rankings at lower stack depths, so it's generally going to be in the top half of very wide ranges like BTN RFI.

At deep stacks, pocket pairs start to have good equity realization due to hitting sets and covering otherwise blank boards that favor the player whose range was uncapped preflop.

In-between, it's in-between. Any number of changes in the amount of dead money and the raise/re-raise sizes are going to have a big effect as they tend to be quite marginal spots.

100bbs deep with no antes and raise size of 150% pot, BTN mostly folds wheel pocket pairs, but they're basically indifferent due to board coverage and the lopsided EV distribution from hitting sets.

At 25bbs deep, you're going to be jamming about half of your wheel PPs (either open jamming them or jamming over a non-all-in 3b) precisely to avoid postflop equity realization problems. Equilibrium 3b sizes don't tend to be very big in this config (eg: it's less than a pot-sized raise on GTOw), so yeah, you're priced in with pocket pairs here but I don't think that answers your question about "large" sizes.

What are the stack sizes, raise/re-raise sizes, and range widths in the scenarios you're referencing?

I would only call when deep.

First of all thank you for the reply helped my understanding of these spots a lot I was looking at 80 bb stacks BNvBB and COvBN with the BB using 4.5x 3b and BN using a 3x 3b new to solver studying and studying poker in general so hope this makes sense

Okay, I'll assume based on the 3x open that there's an ante in this sim, in which case a 4.5x 3b is a little less than R125, which is kind of on the medium size for OOP re-raises deep.

I'd personally expect low PPs to be basically indifferent at this size, even if they're mostly continuing at equilibrium. BTN is opening over 50% at this stack depth / blind structure, and wheel PPs are in about the top 25-30% of hand rankings in deep-stacked poker, and their qualities make them especially favorable in defense ranges (as opposed to, say, A9o, which outranks baby PPs in a lot of spots as the aggressor). So you need to continue with them a fair amount just to not overfold, which would be a theoretical disaster for your blind stealing strategy against a clairvoyant opponent.

In practice, continuing with them can be anywhere from -EV against a passive opponent to outright +EV against someone who has a sufficiently wide range preflop and will let you over-realize postflop or neutral-EV-but-not-worth-risking-chips-over against someone with the right frequencies who won't adjust to your Fv3b frequencies in your limited time at the same table.

Small pairs call 3-bets because set value + position gives enough equity even though most flops miss. They also protect your flatting range so you don’t become too high-card heavy and exploitable. GTO mixes, not pure-calls lowest pairs fold more as 3-bet size increases.

Implied odds