SB open raise small
My first post, and I'm not sure how to do it. I've been a professional poker player for 6 years, and I've always been curious about using this forum. I'm not a great thread creator, nor do I usually have much creativity. But here's my first question, since I can't find any suitable material and wanted to see if there are any players in the same situation as me.
I'm currently finding high cbet passed rates in 3b pots, which I'm working on. I think there's plenty of content online to study. But here's the thing I can't find any material on: playing blind wars vs. low open raises. In this case, I'm seeing a significant increase in players open raising for 2x. How can this strategy be countered? Can you share any material on this strategy?
9 Replies
What is a "high cbet passed rate"? Do you mean that after 3-betting, the player is checking on the flop a lot of the time? In position or OOP or both? What I see a lot is a very low cbet followed by either a check on the turn or a large turn bet. Often a really strong hand.
Also "playing blind wars vs low open raises"? Is this a 2x SB raise? Is this a 2x BB raise? Is this a 2x 3-bet by the BB?
And are you really seeing an increase in a 2x blind raise? I basically see this in Mid stakes tournaments almost never. And when I see it I am thinking KK+.
Sorry for the lack of details, as for 3b pots, they're usually in 35-80bb effective stacks, and I usually have them oop. The sequence is to play F in a 3b pot and on a fairly wide variety of flops against the check, the aggressor usually plays 50-60% bets. While I think the easiest way to counter is to fastplay my strong hands and increase my traps, it's difficult for me to counter since it's facing an aggressive move that leads to turns with low sprs. Calls to 3b are clearly not going to hit.
Regarding the SB, I'm talking about a blind war and that with any stack size from 15bb to 500bb, players OR x2 their size, that is, raise 2bb, and the way to play starts to get strange since you pay with your trash and fold the cb when you stop being aggressive. I don't know how polarized the strategy is.
ABI 20 bucks but mostly in 6-12usd buy ins
When I raise from the SB its to 4x. When I raise from the BB its to 4x.
When somebody raises 2x from the SB I call with probably well over 50% of my hands. And I raise with my best hands. They often fold but a 2x raise from the SB is very rare in my world.
If I limp in the SB and the BB raises to 2x I will never fold. But I would raise 4x (8 bb's overall) with a few very strong hands that I limped with.
What happens on the flop OOP in the SB is rough if I miss or slightly hit. The range I put a 2x BB raise on would be very polarized. Its like a SC or a big PP or JT. I just doubt it would be done with hands like TT or AJ. There is literally no FE to a BB 2x preflop raise after a SB has limped in.
Not sure how to respond to the 3-bet thing. When I call a 3-bet and hit TP on the flop I will usually call the flop cbet and then think hard if the turn bet is also large. I've gotten knocked out with AK vs AA on Kxx flops. But then I've knocked out a player late in a tournament with 77 on a K7x flop when I raised pre-flop and he 3-bet from the SB with AA. I called the large flop bet and raised his large turn bet and he then jammed.
But with PP's I don't call 3-bets unless I can make more than 8x the 3-bet size. Set mining basically. Though tempted I sometimes fold PP's on a flop that are TP. Sometimes its a mistake when I get shown AK after a pot sized flop cbet and I fold. Sometimes I get shown AA or KK. I just find that cbet sizing after 3-bets differs fairly widely. If it is a smallish size I typically call. If it is a big size then it will depend on what I think of the Villain. The crazy ones will 3 barrel bluff but they will also 3 barrel win most of my chips when they aren't bluffing.
I find that people will jam AK/AQ type 3-bets from OOP on the flop or turn if effective stack is < 40 bb's. But the same thing goes for hands like QQ+ except that sometimes Villains bet small on the flop and sometimes turn as well and then jam the river so it looks more like a bluff that missed.
Standard is to raise large from the SB, because 2xing it, you just build the pot OOP.
you figure out how to exploit this the same way as everything else:
- what's the equilibrium?
- make some assumptions
- use guesswork and judgment when credibility is low--this is gambling
- execute, no matter how wacky you think you can get--this is gambling
you figure out how to exploit this the same way as everything else:
- what's the equilibrium?
- make some assumptions
- use guesswork and judgment when credibility is low--this is gambling
- execute, no matter how wacky you think you can get--this is gambling
Trying to be an antinit with this kind of things because I love explotaitative poker and play some low level pools, so, I think that is the momento to make my nickname super high honor and mark the court with some regs.
I don’t know if I’m understanding this thread the right way but here’s what I think is happening. You’re finding yourself in a variety of spots where your in position opponent has min raised, and you're calling out of position.
I like to start by breaking this big idea down into smaller pieces that are easier to work with. Like let’s assume we open 2.5x UTG and it folds around to the BTN and he min raises to 5BB and it goes fold fold.
What’s villains range? Considering he is reraising us from the position where we have our strongest range he could be very polar, which perhaps allows us to exploitatively play against him by getting a good price to call with our middling hands, reraising our best hands, reraising some of our worst hands as bluffs, and folding the rest. Two things that comes to mind here, which I think you may be dealing with right now, are the reverse implied odds and difficulty of playing OOP, which burn EV. Beyond that, our range is capped, which in turn leaves us exploitable, or at the very least, easy to range and therefore play against. In my mind, we have two options. Either find a way to get better at playing these spots, which in this particular spot may include beefing up our calling range by flatting more of our strongest hands pre (AA/KK/etc. some percentage of the time) thereby uncapping our range and making our opponents job more difficult. Alternatively we could avoid this line and all similar lines altogether by playing 4-bet or fold Preflop, which might be slightly -EV, but keeps us from burning tons of EV winding up in spots where we have no idea what we are doing.