[Acevader]

My brother plays at the NL$100 level and has commented on that a lot. He says sometimes he looks around the 8-tables he's playing on and there is a 3-bet on pretty much all of them. It really is shooting yourself in the foot a lot of the time IMHO. I only moved over from 6-max to FR in the last few months and my 3-bet range initially would made even an FR LAG's eye's bleed but I quickly realized it was counter effective at FR NL$200 to have that wide a range. 9-tabling I rely on people not getting too wildly out of line all the time and if you 3-bet like a maniac they will start to pull all manner of crazy moves leaving you with tough commitment decisions nearly every hand. Hey, if you've got 200x the max buy in as a bankroll and a 15 buy in 3 hour downswing is water off a ducks back then go for it; push the variance as high as you can until your opponents bottle it. Otherwise grow a brain and realize that hero 3-betting every other hand because you saw Gus or Phil or whoever doing it on TV really doesn't gain you as much as you might think. In fact, unless your play in 3-bet pots is impeccable it may lose you value.

Today for example I watched GabyGaby 3-bet a CO raise from the BTN with 45s. He then flopped a FD on an ace-high wet board and c-bet his draw as opposed to peeling the free turn. Lucky for him his opponent slowplayed AK and got burnt. I know GG is a solid winning player but now that I know SC's are in his 3-bet range I also know that it's likely he'll 3-bet AQ, KQ, and possibly AJs (maybe even wider) against LP raisers. I also know that there is basically no flop he won't cbet since this was the strongest candidate you'd ever get for taking a free card as opposed to risking being c/r out of the pot. If he pulls stunts like that on me my adaptation will be to decide on a suitable calling range (including the premium pairs) that will be considerably higher in equity terms than his 3-bet range. I'll then c/r him AI on most/all flops and let the maths do the work - he'll usually miss, I put the commitment decision on him and in general I'll have a stronger range. Our variance will be epic but it's his choice if he wants to pull 3-bet squeeze plays with SC's against a regular that simply won't stand for it.

You know the former USSR and the US never nuked each other for a reason....it's lose-lose.