let's talk about flat calling 3bets preflop

ok i've been thinking about this idea of flat calling 3bets more since it came up in a thread last week and i don't like it one bit.

(http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2055123120&page=3)

however,fuzzbox and ste both seemed interested in talking about this more and so am i,so i thought i'd make a thread out of it,(i figured it'd be easier to start a new one than to try and revive an old one)since i'm not certain that i'm right and i'm curious to see where they (and other posters obviously) stand on the issue.

all the below is basically me talking out loud,and i've been thinking a bit about it but i haven't gone through everything so i'll be interested to see what people think,but basically what i did was describe roughly what i intuitively feel on the issue and try to explain why i think what i do. i'm no good at maths at all so once the discussion gets started it might be an idea for someone to run a few numbers on things,especially once ste and fuzzbox say what they had in mind in the other thread.



i think intuitively it might seem that because people's 3betting ranges are so wide these days,we can profitably start to flat call these 3bets more often,which if i understood the posts on the other thread correctly is what is being suggested.

in practice however i don't see how this works.

first of all,to make sure we're all on the same page here,this is what i'm assuming:

- roughly 100bb stacks. the bigger the stacks the more often i'm calling 3bets,i presume thats a given.once we get to 200bb stacks i'm probably flat calling with 80%+ of my opening range.

- default game conditions-ie five or six players,and the player in the hand isn't a total head-the-ball. obviously there are some players who we can flat call 3bets against a lot,either cause they're insanely weak postflop (this is very very rare in my experience) or because they're total nutjobs who will stack off with overcards or whatever.these situations are too subjective to talk about generally i think. so we're assuming that the 3bettor is a solid enough player-he may be bad,but he's not totally insane. also i presume we have been playing fairly standard tight agressive stuff.

-the 3bet is for a decent amount,basically at least 3 times our initial raise.obviously i call much more minreraises,because we are more likely to be priced in and also out of spite.

-for the minute i'll just assume we're talking about cold calling 3bets preflop in position,since there's even more reasons not to cold call these bets oop.

-also,i'll presume we're talking about our opening range excluding mid-high pockets pairs,which there are often good reasons to flat call with,since i presume we are flat calling with these reasonably regularly already.i'll also exclude AK,and accept that sometimes calling with AQ too is fine.

if anyone thinks i'm way off in any of these assumptions obviously let me know,but this is what i was thinking of when i said people should call 3bets less,which is what fuzzbox and ste were talking about.



ok,so we raise in late position,as happens about one in every four hands,and we get reraised by one of the blinds(which seems to happen every single these days)

at the moment i think that,given the above assumptions,we should pretty much never be flat calling here,maybe one in thirty times or something i will (and i'll usually instantly regret it) but beyond that i wouldn't.

fuzzbox and ste seemed to be suggesting,and i hope i'm not misrepresenting them here,that we should be thinking about calling more often. ste you said you'd call with "at least 100bbs" with a lot of hands,i'm wondering how often you will call with 100-120bbs,after that there's obviously much more room to manouver. it was also mentioned that we should call more often when we think we are ahead of the villains 3betting range,which lets face it is going to happen a lot the way the games have gone.

first of all i don't think that just because we are ahead of his range we should call whenever we raise with say QK or A9 and get reraised. if we called every time we thought we were ahead of someone's range things would get out of hand,obviously we do most of them,but sometimes we call a raise with AQ or 33 from the blinds and check fold the flop,even though we are ahead of his range for raising and c-betting. (obviously sometimes we bluff lead or check raise his c-bet,i just wanted to make the point that we don't necessarily call whenever we are ahead of the villains range)

the times we don't call despite being ahead of the villains range are the times when it is going to be too awkward to find out if we are still ahead of his range later on in the hand,in smaller pots this usually has to do with position,and what i am saying is that in reraised pots the dynamics have been changed meaning that even in position things are going to be too tricky.

the trouble is that most competent players who 3bet from the blinds are going to bet almost any flop.ok,so knowing that surely we can just call with a lot of hands,or maybe even raise?

i dunno,lets say 100bb stacks,we make it 3.5 bbs,BB makes it 13.
we call,theres now 27 or so big blinds in there. villain leads for 23. if we call,either because we think we are still ahead of villains range,or with the intention of bluffing him later in the hand,we are in a helluva spot on the turn.

the problem is,and this is what i think is crucial,that the pot is going to be the size of our stack,roughly.

this takes away the option of floating almost completely as i see it,since if the villain has a hand he is willing to felt with he will often check the turn,and this isn't really even making a mistake,since there's only a pot sized bet left to go in.therefore our float is dead in the water,since his turn check doesn't indicate any real weakness.

ok,so the bluff is out,what about the chance that we are ahead of his range?
this is a bit more promising,i presume most of us are already calling 3bets and calling a lot of flops with stuff like TT for this reason,so why not expand this idea a bit more?

well first of all i hate being in that spot with TT,and i'm not even sure if i'm ahead calling with it most of the time in those circumstances,its hard to play right when just one over flops,or when the board comes rags even.however in general i always feel thatTT is just too strong a hand to fold to a 3bet preflop in these games(and too weak to 4bet for value with),and often to a flop bet too. (as i typed that i started to question my assumptions about TT there,i'll have to think about that more and i probably already should have,since this a situation that comes up a lot)

anyway,back to our situation-we called preflop because we thought we were ahead of his range.now he's bet the flop,and there's a good chance we're still ahead of his range. this situation kind of reminds of when i first learned about poker and you learn about the concept of "trouble hands"

this just seems like a trouble spot to me,obviously you shouldn't be avoiding making tough decisions,since this is what poker is all about. however,i think you should be avoiding making decisions where you don't have enough information to make a good one,which is how i see this situation.

its the same stack sizes problem as with the flop-we call the flop,then there's only a pot sized bet left.so if he checks the turn,its tempting to feel like we were right to put ourselves ahead of his range and call the flop.the trouble is yet again though that his turn check really gives us very little information.we can often safely fold to a river push i suppose,but at this stage we've already got a third of our tank in there,and we've presumably got a hand with some showdown value. i just think that in this situation we're trying to act on too little information too much of the time,and i don't see a way around it.

(the one other option if of course that the villain will sometimes check the flop,however i think its way too common for 3bettors to check push the flop with overpairs and strong draws these days for a flop bet here to be much use,its very rare that someone 3bets preflop and check folds the flop,and against players who will we can just put a note on them and do it all the time till they notice.)

it all comes down to the fact,i think,that in a reraised pot where the 3bettor has been first to act and c-bet,a turn bet and check can mean exactly the same thing.obviously there are loads of situations in poker where something means one of two things,but i can't think of another situation where the context is so unhelpful and the two actions so close in meaning.

one thing i would be curious to see,and this actually scares me a little,is if,with that fancy new pokertracker style program i forget the name of,it would be possible to figure out someones three betting frequency,then their c-betting frequency,and then figure out of it is profitable to just call every 3bet for a while and then just push over them on the flop.obviously they would catch on after a while but it might be something that could start happening,although god i hope not the games are tough enough as it is! anyway that's a maths thing so i'd be useless at figuring it out but i'd be interested to see what conclusions anyone reaches. and for the love of god,on the off chance that they haven't thought of it already,don't post it to twoplustwo if you do!

anyway,i'm far from certain about the above but that explains why i was saying what i was in the other thread about not flat calling 3bets preflop except in very specific circumstances.

i'd be interested to hear what everyone else thinks.