Back To Basics. Annoyingly simple preflop question.

Man, ATs is au-to-matic. His PFR is 30! 30! That's more than most solid players' VPIP. Plus, if he's a good player like you say then, if you 3-bet, there's a pretty good chance of taking the pot on the flop if you both whiff (postflop tendencies are critical to answer your specific question). I'd 3-bet almost any A, any pair, maybe even any two cards that add up to 20, even any suited connector above 67 if I'm feeling particularly frisky.

[einbert]

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Another interesting thing to consider is his capping range. If he's adapts to our 3bets and caps more lightly, this is gonna give him back the initiative. Also his average capping hand is gonna be significantly stronger than our hand (even if he sometimes caps JTs he's always capping AA, etc. So if it's someone who caps lightly I can see an argument for a reduction of your 3betting range.

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This is very interesting.

My initial reaction is that if he does increase his capping range, although he makes it slightly harder for us to play against him because we have to account for a wider range of hands, it also certainly makes it a lot harder for him to play the weaker hands he caps. He's going to be building an even bigger pot OOP. And a good portion of the time we will have a big pocket pair or acebig and when he caps and is actually behind to us, it will very often just blow up in his face because it will make it even harder for him to play his weaker hand out of position.

So if he does start doing this, is it worthwhile for us to slightly decrease our threebetting range against him? I think the factors are probably such that it about balances out. What I would do is decrease my threebetting range if he starts raising less preflop than 30% in response to our more frequent threebetting. Of course that's hard to tell while sitting at the table but if you are 1- or 2-tabling you can pull up his session stats in PT (I think this works).

This capping problem is very interesting, it seems like the kind of problem that calls for an optimized solution. But since we get to play the hand postflop in position and we are already aware that he is very aggressive postflop, I can't really see enough reason to let him off the hook by folding hands like A9s and ATo before the flop here. I don't think he'll be able to outplay us so much after the flop "just because he has initiative." In my opinion, something like initiative matters more and more the smaller the pots get and the weaker the hands get. But here our hand range is not very weak esp compared to his opening range, and our hand range hits the vast majority of flops pretty well. With the pot being >9SB going into the flop, the flop is hardly ever going to go bet, fold. But maybe I'm underestimating the effect this adjustment would have for the 35/30 player.

[Lmn55d]

Let's say we 3bet with A9s and he caps with KJo and bets flop and turn of a rag flop. We can't really do anything except fold unimproved because we are a big dog against the range of hands he'd do this with. IF we realize he is capping lightly we can adjust our play by calling down more. But will this have a higher EV than simply folding the hand preflop? This is what I am wondering. Yea he's capping lightly but not really lightly enough where calling down postflop has a higher EV than folding, especially since he's good and aggro. Does this make any sense?

FWIW my default is to give no respect to a preflop cap HU. It's more often a sign of weakness than strength. I basically play postflop as though he just called my 3-bet.

For the observant among you, yes, this means that I often smoothcall re-raises HU preflop with big hands that might warrant a cap (AA-TT, AK, AQs, etc.). Not always, but often.

[EvanJC]

ill agree with everyone else and say 3bet- probably down to A8s, Ajo, KQ, 66+

[einbert]

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IF we realize he is capping lightly we can adjust our play by calling down more. But will this have a higher EV than simply folding the hand preflop

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You could be right here. But I still find it hard to believe that the hands I listed will be less than 0 EV, even if he is making some subtle capping adjustments--if he makes adjustments that are less than subtle we will hopefully quickly notice and adjust back.

I think it's rare that against good, thinking players you get to make a decision that really exploits something about their play, but this is one case where that seems to be true. I'm really gonna stretch to take total advantage of this. Even if I am sligthly -EV by reraising him with A9s, I might make that much or more up if I can persuade him to back off and let me start opening more pots after he folds.

[Grisgra]

What range would you guess a good 35/30 player is open-raising with from the HJ?

[Surfbullet]

Grisgra,

I'm confused about this - you're sitting at the table BECAUSE there are TAGs there? Are you planning on profiting on blind steals? This game doesn't look like the best around.

Surf

[Grisgra]

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Grisgra,

I'm confused about this - you're sitting at the table BECAUSE there are TAGs there? Are you planning on profiting on blind steals? This game doesn't look like the best around.

Surf

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Not a lot of soft shorthanded 30/60 tables around, my good man. I was ready to get up if necessary but I thought I could take advantage of the tight predictable guys I could steal from. There was also a too-loose 40/18 player at the table. And it took me a little bit to learn that the 35/30 player was actually quite good (was hoping for somebody a little more maniacal postflop, but no such luck).

In retrospect I probably should have sit out, but I thought that the table overall would be slightly +EV for me.

[EvanJC]

against the blinds you described, a big one