Small Stakes Super Star

Playing in the full ring games on Merge made me realize that 4-betting on the button is now a popular play. I was really surprised by this because it is so hard to balance a 4-bet bluff range when you have a narrow 4-bet value range. Add this to the fact that you’re opening a really wide range and it isn’t a favorable situation for 4-betting. Watching a video this week reinforced this idea. A coach said that you have to stay one step ahead of opponents by 4-betting light from the button, and he showed a hand where he did that with J9o. I think this is at best a really mediocre strategy and at worst a decent leak. Let me explain why.

Say our opponent opens up from the button 40%, 50%, or 60% of the time. When facing 3-bets, they 4-bet a wide value range like 99-AA, AQ-AK, call with some speculative hands, and 4-bet bluff when they suspect their opponent is getting out of line. I simulated this scenario with three hands, 77, A2o, and A5s, for opening 2, 2.5, or 3 bb. The number I was looking for was the percentage of the time an opponent could take a nonvalue hand and turn it into a bluff before I could shove each to at least break even. With 77, the amount of the time they could bluff with their non value hands before my shove would breakeven was between 5% and 12%, with the most important factor being opening range and second most important factor being their opening size. With A5s, they could bluff between 7% and 15% of the time. With A2o they could bluff between 10% and 21% of the time. Mainly my point is that when your opponent is 4-betting based on table dynamics and not their opening hand, they are going to tend to 4-bet way too much.

This is not to even mention that getting in a hand like 99 or AQ to a 3-bet is by no means a snap decision. It can range from slightly profitable to terrible depending on your opponent. I ran the equity of AQo versus the range 55+, A2s+, AQ+ and it has 47% equity. That means that if I am 5-betting with a 10% range, your 5-bet call is going to have the equity of 94 compared with 77-82 if you fold. Worst case range and your opponent is not 5-betting light, your equity is 35%. That is why AQo plays so much better calling versus 4-betting. The only time you should really be 4-betting AQo is if your opponent calls a lot of 4-bets and you are planning to fold to a 5-bet, or you have a really solid read that your opponent 5-bets a ton. 99 fares a little bit better, with equity ranging from 37% to 53%.

If your opponent chooses to call with the hands 99,TT, and AQ, then their ability to 4-bet bluff without being exploitable goes way down. Now with 77 their bluffing frequency can range from 3%-8% before we should shove, with A5s, it should range between 4% and 9%, and with A2o, it should range between 6% and 12%. If you have a decent read on when someone is likely to 4-bet light, like the first time you 3-bet them in a session or the second time you 3-bet them in a row, then it is really easy to take one of these hands and show a massive profit by 3-betting and 5-betting it.

I would be a little careful when 5-betting light. The numbers that I used for breakeven point were the numbers after you make the 3-bet. For the play to be profitable overall you should have decent fold equity on the 3-bet, or excellent fold equity on the 5-bet. If your opponent has a very low 4-bet frequency, which you can use the stats 4-bet range for the position and also 4-bet vs hero, then 5-betting light goes way down in value. You will know when your opponent is 4-betting too much – it sticks out when someone opens a 50%+ range and 4-bets frequently. Use these guidelines in addition to the open shoving ranges I provided in part one to plan your strategy versus players who 4-bet bluff from the button.

We’re not going to make a lot of money getting in 55 for 100 bb in NLHE games preflop… or are we? 5-betting goes way up in value in situations in NLHE where we have good fold equity versus our opponents. If our opponent makes a 4-bet to 20 bb versus us and we have 100 bb stacks, if we have 1/3 equity we only have to risk 34 bb minus our investment to win the likely 28 bb in the pot. That means our opponent would have to be bluffing 55% of the time on his 4 bet for our bet to be breakeven. This doesn’t sound likely, but what about situations where a player has a very wide opening range and a tight 4-betting value range? Over the next couple articles I am going to mathematically analyze 5-bet situations in NLHE.

The first step in my analysis is determining an unexploitable 3-bet shoving range to shove 100 bb over our opponent’s open without them having a good way to defend against it. If it is unexploitable for us to shove, then it must also be true that 3-betting planning to 5-bet with the hand will always show a profit, and our opponent’s bluff percentage is the profit. This is only going to apply to opponents who like to 4-bet or fold to a 3-bet.

I created a spreadsheet at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0ArqDMNP8uKTSdElKVFJ3bEgzUE9YUEtDQzlkMk16cEE to solve this problem. Feel free to take a look at it and make your own adaptations of it. I’m going to list the discoveries I made for the opening ranges your opponent must have for you to show a profit by open shoving. To simplify the problem I did not take into account card removal. I also set the maximum calling range for our opponent to be 88-AA, AK, and AQ.  This particular example is BB vs BTN

TT- 3x: 24.5% 2.5x: 27% 2x: 31%
99- 3x: 32% 2.5x: 36% 2x: 40%
88- 3x:46% 2.5x: 51% 2x: 58%
22- 3x: 48% 2.5x:53% 2x: 60%
AQ- 3x: 32% 2.5x:35% 2x:40%
AQs- 3x: 27% 2.5x: 30% 2x: 33%
AJs- 3x: 42% 2.5x: 47% 2x: 52%
KQo- 3x: 51% 2.5x: 57% 2x: 64%
A5s- 3x: 50% 2.5x: 56% 3x: 63%

I wouldn’t recommend ever over shoving over an opponents 2-3x open, but these numbers provide a decent basis for us to formulate a 3-bet 5-bet strategy versus an opponent who frequently 4-bets. Next week I am going to look into how often an opponent needs to be bluffing for you to show a profit with 5 betting. With a combination of these two analyses I hope to come up with a great plan to defend against 4bets.

Browsing the poker strategy forums, you will notice a lot of people using the reasoning “I’m not going to 3-bet my AQ or JJ because I don’t want to get 4-bet.”  The thought is that you have your 3-bet value range which you will get in preflop and your 3-bet bluff range which you you fold to a 4-bet.  This is a perfect strategy if our opponent only folded or 4-bet, which is sometimes the case.  If our opponent is calling a decent percentage of the time though you should definitely have a 3-bet thin value range.

Let’s define what a thin value 3-betting range is.  Your thin value range has good value versus your opponent’s 3-bet calling range and poor value versus your opponent’s 4-bet range.  A perfect example is when we have KQ and we are 3-betting a wide button open.  Our opponent is likely to 4-bet any hand that has us in rough shape; QQ+ and AQ+.  The range of hands that they are calling with we have great equity against.

Many times when we 3-bet an open our 3-bet has a polarizing effect, making our opponent 4-bet their strongest hands, call their medium strength hands, and fold their weak hands.  Thus not only are we getting fold equity from our 3-bet we are getting crucial information about the strength of their hand; whereas our hand range is not capped.

3-betting for thin value can be especially effective versus an opponent when you’re in position.  Many opponents at the small stakes will have a calling range from the cut off and small blind when facing a 3-bet.  Since they are out of position, they are less likely to slowplay their big hands preflop so their calling range usually is even more weighted towards medium strength hands than in position.  Furthermore, being in position we can better control the size of the pot postflop.

To those who don’t like 3-betting a strong hand when they might get 4-bet off it, I have a simple question: How strong is our hand once we get 4-bet?  This is a matter of relative hand strength to our opponent’s 4-betting and calling ranges.

In most circumstances your best defense an opponent’s 3-bet is to fold. Many coaches will preach that you shouldn’t fold to 3-bets more than X% or you’re exploitable, but honestly that is BS. Your 3-bet calling range shouldn’t have much relation to your opening range. You should decide your 3-bet calling range based on your assumptions about your opponent’s 3-betting strategy, not on what makes you unexploitable.

It’s natural to have an emotional response when facing a 3-bet from a competitor. We all want to be the best player at poker, and our emotional response is telling us to fight back so we can beat our opponent. Fortunately that response causes bad decisions. It’s fortunate for us because it allows us to play the situation better than our opponents.

A lot of guys open 50%+ from the button, have good results with their steals, and still worry that their opponents are 3-betting them too much. If we open to 3x from the button, we have to be successful 2/3 of the time to show an immediate profit, if we never saw a flop. That means our opponents each have to defend at least 19% of the time on average for our steal to not be immediately profitable. In reality it would be more like the SB defending 14% and the BB defending 24%. It’s fairly easy to picture two regs in the blinds playing quite a bit tighter than that, but it’s hard to picture regs playing much looser without making many mistakes.

Fortunately we don’t have to win 2/3 of the time preflop for the steal to be profitable. With the more marginal hands we probably only have to take it down 50% of the time preflop because a lot of the time we realize some value when we see a flop. For us to have 50% success stealing we need our opponents on average to defend 29% of their hands. It should be evident that it is difficult for our opponents to defend a range of hands that will make your steal unprofitable.

From the blinds, many opponents are going to 3-bet your button open with a range like 99-AA, AJ-AK, Axs, KQ, and 67s-T9s. Many 3-bet you quite a bit tighter. This range is about 10% of starting hands, and a premium hand 30% of the time. Against this range you can probably continue profitably for sure with 6% of your hands(99+, AQ+, Ajs, Kqs), and marginally with another 6% of hands (AJ+, KQ, 77+, 76s+, Qts+, Kts+, Ats+). Thus, our optimal strategy is to fold to about 75% of 3-bets.

Against someone who is 3-betting us with a weaker range, it makes sense to call more 3-bets depending on their post flop tendencies. If the player tends to barrel a lot post flop, we might be better off playing a tight range and benefiting from them putting a lot of money in with weak hands. If they tend to check fold a lot of flops or turns, then we can really start opening up our range more to make more profit. The value of defending with many of those weaker hands is our steal equity post flop.

Be careful buying into the idea that if you fold to a lot of 3-bets that means you have a leak or are playing poorly. It really depends on the kind of opponents that you play against regularly. Many opponents 3-bet strong ranges, so to exploit them we need to fold a lot to deny them from getting value with their strong hands.