[TStoneMBD]

very interesting.

if youre going to 3bet your monsters preflop then you also have to balance it with 3betting some weaker hands as well for deception. dreamclown has gone a different route with deception in never 3betting out of position preflop which allows him to not 3bet marginal hands.

i could be wrong about this, but if youre going to never 3bet out of position it is to conceal the strength of your hand so that you win alot of bets postflop. in order to extract alot of bets postflop due to deception, your opponent would have to play his paired hands very aggressively for alot of bets and the only way to make an opponent go alot of bets with his pairs is to overplay your hands or play them very hard. this is demonstrated by the A5o hand that oreogod posted where dreamclown goes alot of bets with a pair of 5s.

never 3betting preflop might be an excellent strategy but it might only be optimal if your opponent is very aggressive postflop like neverwin is. i really cannot see never 3betting as a viable strategy against passive opponents who go straight into calldown mode after being checkraised.

its also possible that dreamclown regularly does 3bet out of position from the BB but decided not to hear against this caliber of opponent. maybe he thought neverwin wouldnt adjust properly to his preflop smoothcalls since its not a standard line of play? id be interested to hear reports of dreamclown never 3betting out of position against other players or if he 3bets against some at all. i really have no idea how he plays.