Preflop - QTs SB defense

[Isura]

CO is a thinking lag (55/30) and steals almost 50% after 100 hands or so. He plays decent and tricky postflop. BB is super tight, plays less than 15% of hands. CO opens, you have QTs in the SB? I 3-bet the hand. Can calling be correct since BB is so tight? How wrong is folding here?

[IGMorton]

i like calling here just fine. imho, QTs doesn't have enough high card strength for a reraise. it's only a fair hand heads up, since you will loose to ace or king high a good chunk of the time.

it's a good drawing hand with 4 players, but i don't know if 3 players is better than HU considering straight / flush value.

[StellarWind]

I would guess that your odds of getting heads up would increase from 70% to over 90% if you raise. Being heads up is valuable even with a "drawing hand" like QTs because straights and flushes are nice but vulnerable one-pair hands pay the rent shorthanded. Raising instead of calling does three things:

1. Gets you heads up an extra 20% of the time.

2. Puts 2 BB extra in the pot that you will often win. Probably not 50% of the time, but often enough that most of the cost of the reraise is paid for.

3. Avoids a dichotomy where "showdown" hands always 3-bet while "drawing" hands just call. A thinking player could seriously punish you postflop for routinely making such a telltale play.

My strategy is to raise-or-fold in this situation rather than try to identify a few situations where calling might be best. But coldcalling with this hand cannot be bad provided you don't fall into a recognizable pattern.

[J.R.]

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How wrong is folding here?

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no good.

BTW, if you only had 100 hands on the guy the att. steal is meaningless, alhough given his 30 pfr is fairly on point after 100 or so hands i think is fair to assume you are in good enough shape with QTs to see a flop. I like 3-betting unless CO never folds postflop or BB really likes to see flops.