Blind defense against good player - KJs

[Jeff W]

3-bet pre flop. The rest is good.

[Trix]

Very long post, just skimmed through it mostly. I sometimes just call here aswell, but just wanted to comment on this part:

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What range of hands am I folding here? Especially if my preflop call could be a premium hand?

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I dont think he will know that you could have a premium hand, so I dont think it change anything.

[Wynton]

Dare I make the trite observation that pf depends on the opponent? More usefully, perhaps we could identify a certain player-type against whom 3-betting is best, and another type against whom calling is best. Though I have little ability to describe these types, I think this requires more attention to the opponents' post-flop tendencies, than their stealing standards.

To take one obvious type, suppose the stealer is the type who reacts to aggression with even more aggression, both pf and post-flop: in that case, would flat calling pf be superior?

(Sorry, Stellar, I know you're interested in the turn but pf is my own personal rubicon nowadays.)

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To take one obvious type, suppose the stealer is the type who reacts to aggression with even more aggression, both pf and post-flop: in that case, would flat calling pf be superior?

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Yes, and there will be times you want to call this guy to the showdown with king high as well.

Also, if a PFR is very passive, you don't want to 3-bet with KJs either. Against this type, you want to try to hit your hand as cheaply as possible and fold to his bets if you miss.

[PokerBob]

ok...he calls and the river bricks off....now what?

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ok...he calls and the river bricks off....now what?

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Boy, you ARE running bad.

[SparkyDog]

If I read that right you're saying an flop bet after a PF 3bet conveys more strength than a flop checkraise. I disagree.

He's still got position on us if we 3bet and can still jam us up if he calls if we 3bet PF and lead the flop. So that problem can be disregarded due to non-uniqueness.

Why don't we want him raising with worse hands?

Here's my still evolving views on blind defense and really poker in general:

We want to play our hand in a manner that minimizes our mistakes made. Period. Money is made when mistakes are. I think a lot of us would do better to focus on the flow of hands and what we are trying to accomplish than mere hot and cold equity and such.

It is not impossible to induce other players, especially aggressive ones, to make mistakes by underplaying our hand, preflop and every other street.

When our opponent has a worse hand preflop, what kind of cards will he hold? We're ahead of everything except aces and pairs, and that narrows down the range that we're ahead of to broadway and big non paint connectors. And we're not ahead by much. And when we remain ahead it will often be difficult to tell. When we are ahead our position makes it difficult to prevent free cards, lest we fire bets away mindlessly into a pair, or worse yet, get raised with a mere 6 outs in a small pot. Or get raised and they take a free card and we're stuck on the river with a hard decision, the worst street to be stuck with hard decisions to make.

So when we 3bet preflop and our opponent has a worse hand, how much action can we expect? Little to none, if we're still ahead by the flop.

Our hand's a dog to all aces and pairs. Against which hands does it behoove us to suggest more strength than we actually possess? Clearly we benefit from this against small pairs, as we may be able to muscle them out postflop by representing a big hand, creating "bluff" outs with the Aces and Queens that are more likely to show than our Kings and Jacks. The only problem with this ideal reasoning is opponents are often intent on showdown and the fine line between good aggressive play and blindly spewing gets crossed when that happens.

The trend certainly seems to be that you want to force your opponent into a trap where he doesn't show his showdownable hands down and puts too much in with his Queen and Jack highs. But that's awfully difficult out of position, especially when you are under the obligation of maintaining pressure.

And that's another subject. So you 3bet preflop. You bet the flop regardless, hoping to represent all things bad to all hands you're opponent holds at the same time. A-higher kickers to ace-small hands, overpairs to pairs, small connectors that hit the flop to overcards and so on and so forth. But you're opponent knows you autobet the flop. So he reflexively calls. What do you know about his hand now? The few times he folds it's pretty clear you were in the lead anyways. With each bet on each street his hand gets better and better, and you keep representing a better and better hand than his trying to get him to fold. But there's more bad hands than good hands, and you're opponent will figure this out after a while.

But if we reverse these roles, what happens? All of a sudden your hand range widens. You're opponent isn't worried about whether you're ahead or not, he's focused on trying to take this pot away and protect his ace-high. There's an old poker adage about how the action taken on later streets is more represenative of a player's hand than action taken on earlier streets. I think the same can be said of initiative, and when it's taken from you're opponent on a later street it is a more emphatic statement. What exactly it is a statement of depends on the board exactly. The benefit to this is that your opponent's response will tell you more about his hand than anything else. A turn checkraise on an ace-high ragged board is a bold statement. The problem with making such bold statements is that it tells you're opponent a lot. So we must lie.

The reason I hate 3betting out of position is it doesn't let me lie as well. It takes away my flexibility and arranges these preconceived notions about my hand in my opponents head, and HU play isn't as much about what I actually have as what my opponent thinks I have, and whether or not he can beat it.

Now I'm not swearing by any of this, and what I said may cause your loss rate in the blinds to skyrocket.

[SparkyDog]

Well, whatever your opponents mistakes are, you want to push him further in that direction.

If he bets a bit too much (not necessarily bluffs, as he may think he's protecting the best hand) then a flat call is absolutely in order. And you should probably keep doing that after the flop if it's not too ugly, because he's going to keep betting it if it's not too ugly, trying to take the pot with T9o through aggression and position.

If he folds too much, then definitely 3bet. But I have yet to meet a tight aggressive blind stealer that folds too much. If he's prone to call to SD too much, I think making a move post flop when you connect is best.

But I was making the mere observation that YOU are the one that clicks the fold button. If you have a tendency to fold too much if you aren't sustaining aggression, then you should think about how you can better play your hand passively, because passive play is definitely in order against some players in today's games.

[PokerBob]

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ok...he calls and the river bricks off....now what?

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Boy, you ARE running bad.

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ok. but the question still remains. i had a discussion with another player about "fancy moves" like this the other day, and his comment was that you HAVE to follow through on the river if you are making a move.

[Wynton]

I agree with everything you say, Sparky, yet let me try and play devil's advocate. You say that 3-betting is problematic because it doesn't really help deception. Yet, suppose our opponent is the type who doesn't take the 3-bet seriously, and suppose we also happen to have a hand that is CLEARLY better than most of the stealing hands. Since this particular opponent won't interpret the 3-bet for the strength that it is, why not 3-bet then? Perhaps the issue there is that, after a while, that opponent might interpret our hands correctly.

So maybe what all this means is that we simply have to continually change our approach with regard whether to call or 3-bet, at least against those opponents whom we play against for a sustained period?