The wild 3-bets with medium pairs? Discussion about it?

[House-Lion]

Recently I have seen people 3-betting an early or middle-position open-raiser with medium pairs or 3-betting out of the big blind. This from pretty solid players that seem more TAG than LAG and far from maniacs or wild.

One example would be Hero holding a big hand worthy an open-raise, then being 3-bet by cut-off. All else fold.

Naturally if you hold a big pair you will be tempted to cap.

My question is how many sklansky-dollars are the other player loosing?

Many times he will be up against just overcards and hence have a tiny edge preflop, but time to time he will be up against a bigger pair, will those times tilt this play from slight favourite to pretty big looser?

Also the only way to be able to continue with a pair of 7s to 9s would be to either flop a set or to hit a flop with no overs.


I have been 3-betted preflop a few times when holding a big pair, one time the other guy hit his set, other times, god knows how many I guess I have hit my overcards.

One really great time we both hit our sets [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] and rest asure Houselion gladly called the river-cap with the pure nuts!

Now to me this play 3-betting a medium pair just seems far out vs a solid raiser, or even against a not so solid raiser...

I have not even yet taken into account when the 3-betting gets cold-called by either button, one or two of the blinds but then playing with a medium pair quickly must turn really difficult, right?

Once it's heads up and the pre-flop gets capped, there is no way ever this is EV+ due to the implied odds for the medium-pair is getting shot, remember the bigger pair will likely pay off to the river and hence will have more than the flop to actually catch up a potential set in the medium-paired hand.

(Could someone confirm this with some numbers please)