PokerStars No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (4 handed) - Poker-Stars Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

Hero (BB) ($25)
UTG ($25.65)
Button ($33.05)
SB ($32.25)

Preflop: Hero is BB with ATC.
2 folds, SB raises to $1, Hero raises to $3.50, 1 fold

Total pot: $2 | Rake: $0

Villain 23/17 over decent sample.

yes but dont over use it.

It's a once every several orbits sorta dealy?

Seems about right. As long as the sb doesn't adjust it should be profitable.

FYP

I think I tend to abusively threebet someone who is like 30/20 or some looser stats than 23/17. Do you know how many tables he plays?

I would think that a 23/17 is good enough to be raising a fairly wide range when folded to him in the sb. I know it's only an assumption, but it's all we have to go by.

Meh. I would want to know his ATS%, ATS% from the SB and fold to 3-bet% before going overboard with this.

This.

Overfolding your blinds is much less a problem than overraising your blinds, imo.

Actually I'll go on a bit of a speech here. I think random aggression in the blinds is stupid and unprofitable and people don't realize they're spewing. Why are we reraising? Because the player has good stats? So we want to bloat the pot? Shouldn't we rather just call and have position on him? Bloating the pot with any 2 cards is something that bad players do, people that we want to play against!

Yet in this situation it's one we are advocating for. Just reraising a good player in the bb whenever it folds to the SB is a pretty horrible play imo.

hes gotta fold like 70% of the time here, right?

Only if you've figured on having no equity in the pot if he calls (which is not entirely unreasonable, depending on how the postflop play is handled).

The hero would have 30% equity (hot & cold) or so when he's called by a range including big unpaired cards. By that logic, the villain folding half the time would make this move profitable.

Running it hot and cold is no good imo. We are going to find ourselves playing big pots with weird cards here a lot, we are going to want to cbet a high % if we just have any two cards and the pots we lose are going to be bigger.

Your forgetting the times when he 4-bets.

Also even if it is profitable to 3-bet with ATC here doesn't mean we should be. Sometimes its going to be better to flat in terms of EV and even if raising ATC maximizes our EV for the hand against a reg it might not be the best play either.

And if 3-betting is always the best play in terms of EV for that particular hand still against regs I think you have have a balance where you are exploiting one of their leaks, but at the same time not go completely overboard as to have them take notice and completely close that leak while at the same time opening yourself up to be exploited. Maybe once you become an expert at knowing how far you can push somebody its not a big deal, but I just find that from experience getting into these spots where your constantly 3-betting a certain reg can come back to haunt you when they start 4-betting and calling more and you have to put them on a hand range that is very hard to accurately assess because its just hard to know if they are just playing back because they are sick of it or if they are on a card rush or what. For this reason alone against a thinking reg Im always folding the very bottom of my range in this spot.

I agree that we shouldn't be 3-betting here 100% of the time. It definitely needs to be balanced with folds, calls and legitimate 3-bets. I do think it's a situation where some liberal 3-bets can be worked into our range in order to setup greater expectation for our big hands later on though. Especially when you consider that when used sparingly against correct opponents it is going to be +EV.

You're forgetting the times when we 5-bet. ;-)

Our equity is something greater than zero. That's all I'm saying.

Meh, I think I play somewhere close to 23/17, and honestly, I'm pretty nitty from the SB. I really don't think this is all that profitable unless he's been hammering away BvB when it's folded to him. We really need his steal%, fold to 3bet%, 4bet%, etc. I don't like doing it just because he's possibly opening a wide range.