[bozzer]

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I dont feel too good about 3betting AJs preflop, let alone KJs. Did I miss something where all of a sudden it became standard to 3bet mid-range crap?


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No, its more that you seem to have become convinced that 3bet ranges have to be polarised between 'bluffs' and valueraises. that is important against some players but it's not the whole story imo.

warning! tl;dr alert!

I think a lot of people in uNL need to take a big step back and realise that a lot of common phrases like 'turning your hand into a bluff' are really just shortcuts and they don't apply in every instance. you are really turning your hand into a semibluff for a start, and it is important how much equity you have when called etc etc.

hard work as it is, we need to think about the equities and the expectations much more than we are. i don't think i've seen any equity discussion at all in this thread thus far.

one reason is that it is HARD to work out the expectation of calling pre. <u>but we can get an idea of the value of 3betting</u>:

taking a calling range as {qq/jj+,ak}, we have about 25% equity when called.

so EV when called is going to be something like

.25($14.5) - $7 = -$3.4

so if he was just opening {jj+,ak} it would be a big mistake to rr with kjs. it would also be a mistake to call since

25% &lt;&lt; 42% (the pot odds we are getting)

that's too big a gap to make up with position, implied odds, steal equity yada yada...

But most player's ranges are much wider than that. Let's see how wide a range it needs to be for a reraise with KJs to be profitable according to our conservative (but probably fairly accurate of 25% pot equity when called):

a fold to our reraise nets us +$2.75

to find the breakeven FE we need

(FE)2.75 - (1-FE)3.4 = 0

solving for FE gives a required FE of 55%:

.55*2.75 - .45*3.4 = 0

sooooo he needs to fold &gt;55% of the time.

I don't have Poker Stove here at the moment, but I think an opening range of {99+,AJ+} gives the required amount of FE for reraising to be profitable. his 12% range (assuming he is not positionally aware) is wider than this.

so with that in mind, could the proponents of calling please explain with similar logic how calling is 1) definately profitable 2) more profitable than raising?

(hint: calling and playing fit or fold is not profitable against {99+,AJ+} or {12%} without considering implied odds)

I know those questions are harder to work out than the value of reraising, but that's partly the point.

finally i know some people will say the maths is too hard to get an accurate answer. there is a lot of truth in that. where the maths really helps is by giving us much more clarity when we are talking about hands, instead of just passing around well-worn phrases.

to put it another way, even if we can't solve the equations, constructing them is still very helpful for framing our discussion, and it's something uNL needs to do more.