Three-handed strategy

[daboze]

I need help with my 3-handed game. I know that I am being too passive at this point in the game, but I'm not sure how far to take my aggression. Generally once it is 3-handed I play a push/fold game, and I was hoping to get some feedback from the group on threshholds for pushing.

Let me know what you think about these three scenarios assuming we are first to act, BB is 400, and abilities are equal:

1) even chipstacks and we have:
a) QTo
b) K7o
c) J9o
d) Q4s

do i still push with hands where I am a statistical dog (like 22) because of the fold equity?


2) we are chipleader (4000,2000,2000)
a) does anything change from above hands? Do we push on hands with even less strength?


3) we are shortstacked with t1200
a) is it time to push with any two while we still have some chance of stealing the blinds?



You all have helped me improve my bubble play tremendously, now it's time to get my ITM game in order!

Thanks...

[stupidsucker]

I am far more willing to push from the SB then the button. Depending on stack sizes I am very aggressive trying to get the advantage for HU. If the big stack is over 5k with the 2 smaller stacks closer to even, I slow down a little shooting more for second.

I honestly dont know if my new strat is good yet. I used to be highly highly aggressive. had a lot of 3rds, and a lot of 1sts.

[daboze]

Thanks ss. I will open up more in the SB for sure, and probably more in general. In fact in the SB w/avg stacks I think I may be right in pushing all the way down to Q5o, or roughly the top 60% of hands.

anyone think this is too aggressive?

[Scuba Chuck]

Daboze, you would benefit from reading the

Beating the Party 10 + 1 strategy

Type the above into search and you should find it. Thread started quite a few months ago, and there has been quite a few adds.

Particularly, with regards to bubble strategy, I would read the section from Phil Van Sexton (his second comment). I know this talks a lot more on bubble play, but I've learned a lot about the final 3 by using his bubble play strategies.

FWIW, the entire article is excellent.

Scuba