I'm losin' ya here??... how could folding preflop be better than having them fold to a 3-bet? What's wrong with having them fold?
Isn't the fact that they're folding 90% of the time when 3-bet a good thing?.. doesn't this allow us to widen our 3-betting range and I really don't understand why we wouldn't take the oppurtunity to do so right here (surely he's gonna get fed up after awhile, while we exploit him and maybe when he does play back at us, it'll be when we're holding a monster).
I just can't see how folding preflop could be an option at all.. and.. why would we want to just 'call' here and play out of position?
We don't want to 3bet a hand like AQ because it's so far ahead of his range that the value of flatting and playing postflop is much greater than the value of 3betting and just picking up the dead money.
For instance if he raises Q5o, we both flop top pair, and we win lots of chips.
This doesn't happen every time, but the value of playing postflop (that is, 'coolering' him when we both flop pairs, getting to showdown sometimes when we miss, and buying the pot when he gives up or shows weakness) is going to be on average much better than the times we get the dead money preflop.
KQ is obviously weaker than AQ, but can be played similarly. It's just not as much of a disaster to 3bet since it doesn't win as often as AQ at showdown (or even A2/22/etc considering BTN's range) and isn't as strong postflop (though close).
So to answer Deco: in general the
hands I'm flatting are the 'in-betweeners'. ie, the hands that clearly are ahead of the stealer's range, but that aren't quite good enough to 3bet.
There's also a huge consideration about player type and how often they're calling vs our 3bet preflop rather than 4betting/folding. We generally can call a hand like KQ if we don't expect him to call a 3bet against us with much worse, but if he's bad and is calling worse (and giving up well postflop) then we just go ahead and do it for value.