Mailbag: Making 3- and 4-Bet Decisions

This question first appeared on the Tournament Poker Edge forums, under the title “Looking for some insight in to effective stack sizes and 3-bet/4-bet decisions.”

Q: I’ve often wondered how best to consider stack size when confronted by 3 or 4 bets. I have a vague sense it is about trying to get value out of my strong hands, narrow ranges and lower my SPR, but I’d be lying if I knew enough to not feel a little lost here.

For example, …
– I have AKs and open 2.2BB
– V 3-bets to 7BB
– I ?…with 20BB effective vs 80BB vs 200BB…?
At 20BB I’m jaming.
At 80BB am I just calling or 4-betting? Wouldn’t a 4-bet be folding out hands I want in, like AQs?
At 200BB do I add some/more 4-bets? If so, can I ever fold to a reasonable 5-bet?
What about holding KK facing a 5-bet with 200BB effective.
What about QQ…the absence of a K blocker and the presence of a Q blocker makes it more likely we are flipping or behind an average 4-bet calling/raising range? If that is true, do we 3-bet/jam 20BB but 3-bet/call 200BB (just as another example of my question).

I realize this is a pretty wide question and assuming no read on V, and may even be stylistic to some extent, but any feedback would be quite welcome.

A: You’re on the right track with your thinking, but you left out a critical detail from your original question: position. The only reason anyone plays any hand other than Aces is that there is money in the pot pre-flop. The fewer people there are still to act behind me, the more hands I can (and therefore should) profitably open raise.

Once someone raises in front of me, I have a new dilemma: there is more money in the pot, but there is also someone who is claiming to have a strong hand. However, I know that, like me, he has some incentive to raise even without the nuts, which is why I probably don’t have to have the nuts to re-raise him.

When you have a hand that you believe to be ahead of the original raiser’s opening range, you have to make a decision: do I call, 3-bet, or even fold? You need to estimate the expected value of each and choose the option with the highest EV. When considering a 3-bet, this basically means answering four questions:

1. How often will my opponent fold, and how much do I have to gain from those folds? Hands like AK and JJ benefit more from fold equity than KK or AA do, even though you may not be raising them “as a bluff” (in other words, you may also expect to be ahead of a calling or even 4-betting range).

2. How often will my opponent call, and what can I expect that call to be worth? This is a function of your equity vs a likely calling range as well as how well your hand will play after the flop (if your 3-bet is not all in).

3. How often will my opponent 4-bet, and how will I fare against a 4-betting range? Especially when a 4-bet isn’t likely, it’s OK to 3-bet a hand for value even though you will fold to a 4-bet.

4. How does the EV of calling compare to the EV of 3-betting (which is determined by the above three questions)?

We don’t need to inquire about the EV of folding, as it’s always 0. So generally, if calling or 3-betting has positive EV, we can rule out folding, though there are tournament situations where cEV and $EV deviate significantly.

Of course in many cases you don’t know exactly how your opponent will respond and so can’t put exact numbers on these things. However, you should recognize that there’s a relationship between them. If you opponent opens from the CO and you have AK on the button, you are probably far enough ahead of his opening range that he will either fold very often or call/4-bet a range that AK is well ahead of. Either way, you win. The one thing that can’t happen is for your opponent to rarely fold and also reliably have AK smoked. It’s hard to get dealt a hand that strong, especially when an A and a K are accounted for, and your opponent has incentive to raise a wide enough range from the CO.

It is possible that your opponent doesn’t properly understand or respond to his incentive to attack the blinds and is a huge nit when it comes to raising the CO. If you knew that, you might prefer not to 3-bet him with AK.

However, if you do unwittingly 3-bet the nit with AK, that doesn’t mean that his nitty strategy is exploiting you. For one thing, the mere fact that he is raising suggests he is not a nit (nits raise less often than other players). But even if he is, you are passively benefiting from many situations where you would have had to fold your button if he’d raised his CO, but because he made overly tight folds from the CO, you got to make a +EV raise on your button. Basically, all those folding mistakes he makes from the CO overwhelm whatever he gains by getting lucky enough to “trap” you when he has AA in the CO and you have AK on the button.

If you’re interested in examining these spots in greater depth and getting a sense of what balanced opening, 3-betting, 4-betting, etc. ranges look like, Hold ‘Em Resources Calculator is a very good tool for the job.

2 thoughts on “Mailbag: Making 3- and 4-Bet Decisions”

  1. why do people always have to add in “no read on opponent.” Doesn’t leaving it out just imply that we should be playing GTO given the circumstances? Feel like way to much emphasis is on making exploitive plays.

    • Most likely because it is so common many other places online for someone to ask a question and get a responds like “Totally depends on the situation and the player.” So I think people add that so that they don’t waste their time typing put the question to get such a worthless response.

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