How and when to 3-bet light   by mersenneary   One of the biggest leaks I helped correct in players when I gave private coaching was making light 3bets with the wrong sorts of hands in the wrong situations. It's a very powerful tool to have at your disposal, especially if you like playing against nitty regs. 3-betting wide can get you into a decent amount of trouble against the wrong types of players, so it's good to make sure you understand when and how to step up the aggression out of position.   3-betting light comes down to four main factors:  

1. Your opponent's opening range.
2. How loose/aggressive your opponent is preflop and postflop.
3. The properties of the specific hand you've been dealt.
4. Gameflow

  So often, when I ask a student, “why did you 3-bet there?”, they give me an answer that seems completely unaware of some or all of these factors. Let's talk about why they matter and how. The first one honestly just comes down to discipline, one of the least sexy aspects of poker. You have to be paying attention to your opponent's opening range to know whether a light 3bet is good. That's just categorically going to be true, and I've seen so many students put in light 3bets in awful situations because they had a good hand to do it with, against an opponent who is pretty tight against aggression, and yet be completely oblivious to the fact that the opponent was opening only 30% of hands, which made the 3bet atrocious. Your opponent's opening range is perhaps the most important factor in determining the EV of a light 3bet – if you remember one thing from this entire program, remember to focus on your opponent's preflop tendencies and realize how drastically that affects optimal decisions later in the hand. This is yet another of those situations. Paying attention to this sort of thing isn't sexy, but you know what is sexy? Lots and lots of money. So keep your discipline. The wider your opponent opens from the button, the better a light 3-bet will be, whether it's a 3-bet bluff or a lighter 3-bet for value with a hand like KT. The second factor is why 3bet bluffing is often not such a great idea against most fish – recreational players tend to want to see too many flops, and be too loose when they get to the flop. Thus, even if your opponent is opening a wide range, it doesn't mean you need to have a 3bet bluffing range. If they're too loose, expand your 3betting range to include more value hands. One of the main benefits to 3-bet bluffing is the ability to pick up the pot on dry boards. If your opponent is the type to float and call down any pair, that T3s needs to hit the muck preflop rather than be 3bet, and your 3betting game becomes all Valuetown. Let's stop quickly to make an important point: Opens a wide range, plays fairly tight and fit-or-fold against aggression. What does this sound like to you? To me, this sounds a ton like your garden variety $30-$100 nitty reg, who has learned to open a high percentage and c-bet as a profitable strategy, but still has the terrible affliction of wanting to get it in really good all the time, rather than actually gamble and make creative plays. That's why 3-betting light absolutely needs to be in your arsenal against nitty regulars – it's a strategy built for destroying them. As for which hands to 3-bet light, there are different schools of thought here and you can build some ranges that make a lot of sense in a few different ways. However, the big point I'll make is that when you 3-bet, it should be because you think 3-betting is better than all other options. In the case of T8s, you should believe that 3betting has better expectation than calling the raise, a very attractive option. When you have T3s, you only need 3-betting to have better equity than folding, because that's probably what you'll do if you don't 3-bet. That's why in general, I'm really not that big of a fan of 3-betting middling suited connectors, and think those hands work much better in your flatting range. Remember, also, your opponent's likely flatting range, and what your perceived range is when you 3-bet. Most villains will have flatting ranges of mostly middling cards, and will perceive your 3-bet to have a lot of Ax and Kx in it. That's why I'm really not a fan of adding a hand like A3o to your light 3betting range in most situations. First of all, as we just talked about, it has pretty good expectation calling a minraise, so there's a pretty high standard that 3-betting has to beat. Secondly, pretty much all of his calling range is going to have good equity against us and play exceedingly well against us postflop. The ace is such an overt part of our range that we'll find it hard to get much value, and though I don't want to overexaggerate, you can think about it as 3-betting with your ace face-up and a three in the hole. That's not a super attractive proposition. If you do 3bet with weak Ax hands, it should be because your opponent has very strong tendencies of folding to small-ish 3bets after opening a wide range, and even then, it's a debate. Hands like J5s can work much better in your 3bet-bluffing range because you get credit on all the ace-high and king-high flops, you can flop some good equity on some more middling flops, and your expectation from just calling preflop isn't very good. When you 3-bet light for value, it's best to do it with hands like KT/QJ/QTs, because those hands dominate a lot of the calling range and play much better on more flops, not a hand like A7o. The final reason I listed was gameflow. Gameflow is by far the sexiest of the 4 things listed – people love to talk about it as a reason for making a decision in poker. It implies an expertise in the subtle nuances of the way the match is going, a mastery of “feel” poker that is far cooler to talk about than “hey, look at me, I know his opening and limping ranges”. Along with this, however, gameflow is an excuse used badly incorrectly a good deal of the time, so while it is certainly a factor, it's important to get it right. The biggest thing to be noticing is how your opponent seems to be adjusting to your wider 3-betting range. If you see him increase his limping frequency after getting 3-bet a lot, it's important to realize that his raising range wasn't what it was 20 hands ago. Gameflow is a lot of paying attention to whether your opponent is adjusting or not, and when he feels safe to raise a wide range, and when he's going to be playing more cautiously. Opening range, looseness/aggression of your opponent, the properties of the hand you're dealt, and gameflow. I hope this provides a better understanding of when to 3-bet light, for value or for bluff. As always, post any questions.   mers