Playing vs unknowns in 3bet pots

With a big sample on your opponent you can easily take the exploitative action vs them. If they 3bet really wide you can defend a wider range, if they 3bet hardly ever then only continue with a tight range or to setmine if the odds are good.

Postflop it is also straightforward. If they always cbet the flop and rarely cbet turn then just float them in position. If they tend to barrel a lot then slowplay your strong hands vs them and call down light more/turn marginal hands into bluff raises on the flop. Easy peasy.

But what do you do against a totally unknown player? What is your DEFAULT strategy? Please answer these questions (assume standard bet sizing etc):

1) If you raise from the BTN and an unknown resteals, what range are you defending and how (call or 4bet?)

2) Let's say you raise 99 from BTN, unknown resteals from BB, you call. Flop comes J72 and he cbets a standard amount. Do you fold, call or raise? if you call and he cbets turn on a brick, do you call again? if you bluff raise and he calls, do you shut down completely?

3) Also BTN vs BB, but this time you have KQ and flop comes Q72. He cbets you call. Turn is a 3 he cbets again you call (ever fold here?). River comes a 2 and he shoves, do you call? If not, do you call with AQ?

At the moment i only defend a very narrow range vs unknowns until i figure out their style. I will even fold 99 and KQ (even AQ) pre in the instances above due to not knowing what to do on most flops. Could someone please elaborate on their default strategy vs unknowns and explain how they'd handle the instances above?

mottotom27 said:

1) If you raise from the BTN and an unknown resteals, what range are you defending and how (call or 4bet?)

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In a OOP vs IP 3Bet scenario I have a pretty easy 3/4/5bet game, which I worked on a lot in the past so I don't really have any tough decisions there. If he flats my 4bet then I'm pissed-off but obviously given the stack sizes, its a 2 streets game postflop, which I guess you can still try to figure out and make your decisions easier.

In a IP vs OOP 3Bet scenario, I have of course a flatting range (most of the time).

mottotom27 said:

2) Let's say you raise 99 from BTN, unknown resteals from BB, you call. Flop comes J72 and he cbets a standard amount. Do you fold, call or raise? if you call and he cbets turn on a brick, do you call again? if you bluff raise and he calls, do you shut down completely?

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Wait, what? Why are we raising 99 (even specifically: bluff raising) on that board, especially given that, like you said, we (you) have a really narrow range there? I'm not that great at this yet, but I think 99 is more or less near the bottom of my calling range there.

mottotom27 said:

3) Also BTN vs BB, but this time you have KQ and flop comes Q72. He cbets you call. Turn is a 3 he cbets again you call (ever fold here?). River comes a 2 and he shoves, do you call? If not, do you call with AQ?

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Again, a dry and static board... AQ is probably like the very top of your range there (depends on the range though) so I guess you should be calling him down on most turns. In practice, its not like you know completely nothing about a guy - you still have some population tendencies/reads (eg: 10NL regs playing really "honest" OOP OTR on dry boards) or your own experience, which you can use.

mottotom27 said:

At the moment i only defend a very narrow range vs unknowns until i figure out their style. I will even fold 99 and KQ (even AQ) pre in the instances above due to not knowing what to do on most flops. Could someone please elaborate on their default strategy vs unknowns and explain how they'd handle the instances above?

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I think you just need to work on your default GTO oriented strategy to answer those questions/make your life easier against unknowns. This is where math/theory becomes really, really useful and helpful.

1) 22-JJ, SCs; stack off AK, QQ+... no need to call AQ vs unknown, it is not like you lose much value folding it vs. average player

2) Call, most of his range missed (AK/AQ), if he barrels turn then fold vs. unknown.

3) Don't call vs. unknowns with dominated hands, problem solved. You can bluff 4bet KQ but vs. unknown it is kinda stupid (much better vs. wide restealer).

LD1977 said:

1) 22-JJ, SCs; stack off AK, QQ+... no need to call AQ vs unknown, it is not like you lose much value folding it vs. average player

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LD1977 said:

3) Don't call vs. unknowns with dominated hands, problem solved. You can bluff 4bet KQ but vs. unknown it is kinda stupid (much better vs. wide restealer).

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I think, I would never 4bet bluff KQ being IP (as a part of my "default" strategy/ranges). Also, I don't like flatting those lowest PPs. Oh, and there is also a matter of hands such as: AJ, AQ, KJ etc - which I think are quite standard to defend OTB (unless of course blinds are extremely tight but OP assumes those are unknowns).

You play those games more often (and much higher limits) though so I can't argue with you, I can only speculate

LD1977 said:

2) Call, most of his range missed (AK/AQ), if he barrels turn then fold vs. unknown.

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We both agreed about the flop play! :cheers:

I seriously dislike having dominated hands in 3bet pots, even IP.

But those same hands have nice blockers so are good bluff 4bets.

Of course if someone 3bets super wide (= my dominated hands are NOT really that dominated) then things change and I might decide to call, but even then only if he doesn't fold to 4bets much.

i don't like flatting with small pocket pairs because essentially we are setmining in a 3bet pot. given that the average player resteals around 8% of the time according to my database and sample, i'm not convinced folding a hand like AQs is optimal in BTN vs blinds (vs an 8% range AQs has good equity in position), but i guess it's better to be too tight than too loose in 3bet pots since 8% is just a rough average of resteal stats and some players may resteal quite a bit less.

yea i agree i don't like flatting hands like KQ/KJ/AJ to a 3bet since as you said, domination is very likely there, so even mucking a hand like KQs can't be that bad.

on the 99 on J72 yea i agree the flop misses his range but on the turn we don't know he's gonna just check/fold his air hands. some players like to barrel with AK especially if a T or Q comes, and T,Q,K or A all improve his range, that's a lot of cards that can come. Plus i'd say about 2/5 of his range already has us beat with overpair or Jx.

So we're basically hoping that a) he gives up his air, b) he doesn't improve to a better hand and c) he doesn't already have us beat so it's quite optimistic to hope for all of that. To put it into perspective, the average player cbets turns in 3bet pots around 55% of the time for my sample.

And if he checks the turn are you betting 99 to protect your hand vs overcards or are you checking back to try and get to cheap showdown?

another problem. BTN vs BB again, you have JJ and defend a resteal. 963 flop, he cbets you call. Turn 2 he cbets again, do you call? if so, are you calling a river shove if the river is an undercard?

How about 99 on 872 instead of J72, turn bricks and he bets again. Let me know how you'd handle situations like this

100bb stacks.

Lets say you open 3bb, SB 3bets to 10bb, BB folds.

You need to call 7bb, pot is 14bb, 90bb stacks behind. I don't see a problem calling pairs? Even if you have zero hand reading skills you can simply setmine and not fold preflop (which is netting you -300 bb/100 BTW).

If you are really concerned about floating flop then just fold. You didn't say what exactly you play so meh.

sure i'm netting -300bb/100 by folding but i find i'm losing even more when i call due to bad postflop play (either that or variance). odds of hitting a set are 7:1 against. so if i call 7bb in the example you gave i need to win 49bb more from my opponent. Since there is 13bb of dead money in the pot i need another 36bb on average on the flop and turn. That's the equivalent of him betting a standard 12bb on the flop and 24bb on the turn every time. since clearly this won't happen every time we have to be pretty confident we'll win his stack by the river a decent portion of the time. and what happened to your 20:1 reasoning in the link below? here it's more like 14:1 assuming 100bb stacks.

https://www.cardschat.com/forum/cash-games-11/small-pocket-pairs-vs-3-bet-222020/

Set mining in 3B pots don't really work mathematically unless we are deeper than 100bb IF WE ARE FACING decent opponents.

Set mining in general is becoming less and less profitable in HU pots as play has evolved because people generally aren't in a hurry to just stack off to a mystery range.

Positional advantage is on our side.

I am making 152 EVbb/100 when calling 3bet in BTN total, with pairs much more (50 NLZ). Sample 118 hands over 18k BTN hands played.

22-99 = +339 EVbb/100
22-JJ = +448 EVbb/100

You need to improve postflop play IMO. Still you didn't answer what level we are talking about.

Edit: Fixed numbers.

sorry i'm playing 10nl atm

LD1977 said:

Positional advantage is on our side.

I am making 152 EVbb/100 when calling 3bet in BTN total, with pairs much more (50 NLZ). Sample 118 hands over 18k BTN hands played.

22-99 = +339 EVbb/100
22-JJ = +448 EVbb/100

You need to improve postflop play IMO. Still you didn't answer what level we are talking about.

Edit: Fixed numbers.

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i congratulate you in being able to manoevre well in 3bet pots with small pairs. i'm guessing you don't always fold your 22 when 3 overcards come, but i don't have the skills to do that yet

I doubt people defend blinds that much at 10NL, meaning it is not all that important.

Still, you can't fold pairs IP vs a resteal and not be horribly exploitable.