Archive for July 26th, 2009

Thanks to everyone who commented on my recent post “You Tell Me: How’d We Do?“. I’ll address a couple of the great questions and comments here and share my own thoughts.

1. The pre-flop 3-bet. I’m certainly not doing this everytime I have J9s, but my 3-betting range is going to include a mix of hands that will shove to a 4-bet (which will itself be a mix of value and bluff hands) and hands that will fold to a 4-bet. When choosing hands for the latter category, I’m considering two factors: how will the hand play post-flop if called, and would it be more profitable just to call pre-flop rather than to 3-bet. In this case, I’m pretty sure folding is better than calling. And J9s is going to play a lot better post-flop than is a “better” hand like AJo. The point I want to emphasize is that his high 4-bet % is not a reason to never 3-bet him without a hand that can 5-bet. Certainly I should do it less than I would against someone who folds more often, but unless he 4-bets 100% of the time, my range should include some bluffs. And as long as he calls at least some of the time (and his Call 3-Bet stat is certainly relevant, as some of you pointed out, though I didn’t consult it at the time), then it matters how my hand will play post-flop when called.  Read the complete post...