The term “3 bet” has a tendency to cause confusion, especially amongst newer players. It
frequently happens that a new 🫰 player will assume that a “3 bet” is a raise roughly 3
times the size of the previous bet. It’s 🫰 quite easy to see how this assumption arises.
Let’s first consider the correct definition of “3 bet”.
3 bet = The 🫰 third bet in any
given sequence of bets.
Watch Kara Scott Interview with Martin Jacobson on 3
betting:
The reason for the 🫰 confusion is that when we 3 bet preflop it appears to
actually be only the second bet in the sequence. 🫰 A player open-raises, we decide to
re-raise them. The reason why this is referred to as a 3 bet is 🫰 because the mandatory
SB and BB payments are referred to as the first bet in the sequence. Hence the
open-raise 🫰 is actually a “2bet”, while the re-raise is considered a 3 bet.
Because of
this, confusion arises now regarding postflop 3 🫰 bets. Imagine our opponent fires a
continuation bet on the flop and we check-raise. This is now clearly the 2nd 🫰 bet in the
sequence, but it gets commonly (yet mistakenly) referred to as a “3 bet” by many
players. In 🫰 order for an actual 3 bet to take place, our opponent must re-raise again
over our check/raise in the given 🫰 example.
Why 3 betting is Important
It doesn’t take a
huge amount of statistical analysis to realise that 3 betting makes more 🫰 money than
cold-calling on average. The only reason we don’t 3 bet our entire continuing range
preflop is that our 🫰 opponents might adjust and begin to exploit us, when they realise
we are 3 betting too aggressively. The idea is 🫰 to get away with 3 betting as much as
possible without our opponents being able to make exploitative adjustments.
To put 🫰 it
simply, we need to incorporate 3 betting into our poker strategy because it can provide
a significant boost to 🫰 our winrate.
Let’s take a look at some potential 3 betting
ranges against opens from various positions.
3 betting on the Button
The 🫰 button is a
great place to 3 bet aggressively since, if we get called, we are always guaranteed to
have 🫰 position postflop.
Our 3 betting range will typically be divided into a selection
of value-hands and a selection of bluffs. In 🫰 most cases, it is correct to bluff
slightly more than we value-3 bet. The effect of position on this should 🫰 be noticeable
– we can get away with a higher ratio of bluffs, assuming we have position.
The purpose
of a 🫰 value 3-bet is simply to get called by a decent selection of worse hands in order
to make money. The 🫰 purpose of a bluff 3 bet is to take the pot down preflop. We know
that we usually do not 🫰 have the best hand, but if our opponent sometimes folds, we can
profit.
Usually, we don’t bluff with any 2 cards.We 🫰 pick hands that have potential to
improve to a strong 5-card holding by the river. These hands will frequently have 🫰 a
nice combination of both playability and poker equity, maybe something like Axs for
example.
We’ll often find that it is 🫰 common for our 3 bet bluffing hands to be slightly
weaker than our cold-calling hands, although this is not always 🫰 true.
3 bet BTN vs
CO
In the following chart, our value-3bets are represented in light red while our
bluff-3bets are represented 🫰 in dark red.
Value 3bet range – 4.52%
Bluff 3bet range –
9.05%
Total 3bet range – 13.57%
Notice how there is a gap 🫰 between the bluff 3 bets and
value 3 bets. For example, holdings such as ATs. These holdings usually end up 🫰 in our
flatting range and are a little too strong for us to consider 3 bet bluffing.
