Mase31683
Legend
Silver Level
I see a lot of people asking the same question in different ways. If you look around you'll find them where someone asks, "What do I do with X in Y?" What do I do with KQ in MP? What do I do with JJ oop? Do I 3bet JJ here? Lots of people seem to have trouble with that hand for some reason, so that's the one I'm going to use. In reality, it's the question itself, and the line of thinking associated with it that is flawed.
You shouldn't ever do something. In reality you, as well as most players, thought process needs to change. There aren't specific hands to 3bet and hands to not. There's no specific answer for any situation in poker. Poker isn't formulaic, no matter how much I wish it were. Limit Hold'em games can begin to be tailored to GTO (Game Theory Optimal), but no limit, for now at least, is just too multi-faceted to nail down with simple math. You need to look at the player who raised, determine what his playing style is, and then determine a course of action against that player. Your cards are not the scenario you are in, merely one small part of it. I'm going to just scrape the surface of how you should think about a hand when playing poker, specifically delving into a position in which a player in front of us has opened the pot for his standard raise, and we have JJ. Effective stacks are 100bb.
If there's someone who's raising a lot of hands, and calling 3bets, then you don't want to 3bet him light, skew your range toward big pairs and hands that can make a big pair on the flop. Hands like suited connectors and small pocket pairs are not going to be as profitable, because when our opponent is on a wide range, we're not ever going to know where we stand unless the flop smashes our holding. There are still other factors to consider, such as his postflop aggression, how often he folds to cbets, if he will bluff us off the best hand sometimes. These factors all determine how wide we can 3bet him. If he's folding a majority of the time in 3bet pots, and is still calling 3bets, well we want to 3bet him with almost any two cards, because that's free money. If instead he's going to be making life tough postflop, raising us, and putting pressure on, when we have mediocre hands, we don't want to 3bet as much, since our edge is being reduced.
If he's raising lots of hands, but folding to 3bets, then you want to 3bet him wider, make him pay for playing weak cards. This can make money in quite a few ways, and you can isolate him quite similarly to how you would isolate a limper.
If your opponent is tight, or a nit, then his range is weighted heavily toward large pocket pairs and big cards, likely AK or AQ, but maybe KQs. Against this player you probably only want to 3bet your very best holdings.
Once you know what your gameplan is for the situation overall, then what to do with your hand becomes clear. Try not to think, "What do I do with X hand in Y spot?" Poker isn't that cut and dry.
So we have a general idea what we want to do against these villains when they raise. Now how does our hand {JJ} fit into the picture?
The first guy, JJ fits nicely into hands we would like to 3bet against him, as our hand is quite likely the best. It's certainly crushing his range. Of course, if he's aggro postflop, then he might make things hard on us on any flop with a Q, K, or A. If we'll have trouble with those spots, then it may be preferable to simply flat him, especially in position, knowing he'll cbet wide, and we can comfortably play postflop with a solid hand in a non-bloated pot. Otherwise, we'll often have initiative on the flop, and can decide our action from there, again based on what we know about our opponent combined with our hand strength/strength of our range as perceived by villain.
Second villain, we're 3betting, but this time our cards have little to do with it. Yes, it's nice to have something to fall back on, but he's opening wide, and has shown he will fold when faced with a 3bet. The 3bet itself will likely show an immediate profit, and if that doesn't work, then we'll play a pot postflop, where we can still either win with cbets, or make a winning hand. I'm not saying 3bet any two cards (though if he folds enough you can do so mathematically) but you can go really wide in this spot, and JJ easily fits in any "reasonable" holding.
Our third spot introduces a nitty villain who raised, with what is likely a very strong range. Since he's so strong, we can only 3bet our very best hands, and only for value, since we assume villain will be hard to push off his holding, since it is very likely to already be quite strong. If he's raising {TT+, AK, AQ, KQs}, even though we're ahead of a lot of that range, JJ still only has 47% equity. Not bad, but not great, and once you 3bet him, he's likely ditching the lower part of that range, leaving our JJ at ~36% equity, not good. To get to the point where you have the slight edge on the hand range he'll play for a 3bet, you need to be playing {KK+, AK}, which gives us 52%, just over even. To really have an edge, you need to stick to either QQ+ or KK+, which is about what we said at the beginning, that you need one of the very best hands.
So think about, how do we play against a nit who raises? What hands are we looking to play against them in position? Why? I'm not going to answer this one, I want you to try and think about it for yourself, and determine how you want to play that spot. Think about other scenarios that arise, and what the proper actions are in those spots, not the cards. You might just find yourself starting to think about poker a little more clearly.
You shouldn't ever do something. In reality you, as well as most players, thought process needs to change. There aren't specific hands to 3bet and hands to not. There's no specific answer for any situation in poker. Poker isn't formulaic, no matter how much I wish it were. Limit Hold'em games can begin to be tailored to GTO (Game Theory Optimal), but no limit, for now at least, is just too multi-faceted to nail down with simple math. You need to look at the player who raised, determine what his playing style is, and then determine a course of action against that player. Your cards are not the scenario you are in, merely one small part of it. I'm going to just scrape the surface of how you should think about a hand when playing poker, specifically delving into a position in which a player in front of us has opened the pot for his standard raise, and we have JJ. Effective stacks are 100bb.
If there's someone who's raising a lot of hands, and calling 3bets, then you don't want to 3bet him light, skew your range toward big pairs and hands that can make a big pair on the flop. Hands like suited connectors and small pocket pairs are not going to be as profitable, because when our opponent is on a wide range, we're not ever going to know where we stand unless the flop smashes our holding. There are still other factors to consider, such as his postflop aggression, how often he folds to cbets, if he will bluff us off the best hand sometimes. These factors all determine how wide we can 3bet him. If he's folding a majority of the time in 3bet pots, and is still calling 3bets, well we want to 3bet him with almost any two cards, because that's free money. If instead he's going to be making life tough postflop, raising us, and putting pressure on, when we have mediocre hands, we don't want to 3bet as much, since our edge is being reduced.
If he's raising lots of hands, but folding to 3bets, then you want to 3bet him wider, make him pay for playing weak cards. This can make money in quite a few ways, and you can isolate him quite similarly to how you would isolate a limper.
If your opponent is tight, or a nit, then his range is weighted heavily toward large pocket pairs and big cards, likely AK or AQ, but maybe KQs. Against this player you probably only want to 3bet your very best holdings.
Once you know what your gameplan is for the situation overall, then what to do with your hand becomes clear. Try not to think, "What do I do with X hand in Y spot?" Poker isn't that cut and dry.
So we have a general idea what we want to do against these villains when they raise. Now how does our hand {JJ} fit into the picture?
The first guy, JJ fits nicely into hands we would like to 3bet against him, as our hand is quite likely the best. It's certainly crushing his range. Of course, if he's aggro postflop, then he might make things hard on us on any flop with a Q, K, or A. If we'll have trouble with those spots, then it may be preferable to simply flat him, especially in position, knowing he'll cbet wide, and we can comfortably play postflop with a solid hand in a non-bloated pot. Otherwise, we'll often have initiative on the flop, and can decide our action from there, again based on what we know about our opponent combined with our hand strength/strength of our range as perceived by villain.
Second villain, we're 3betting, but this time our cards have little to do with it. Yes, it's nice to have something to fall back on, but he's opening wide, and has shown he will fold when faced with a 3bet. The 3bet itself will likely show an immediate profit, and if that doesn't work, then we'll play a pot postflop, where we can still either win with cbets, or make a winning hand. I'm not saying 3bet any two cards (though if he folds enough you can do so mathematically) but you can go really wide in this spot, and JJ easily fits in any "reasonable" holding.
Our third spot introduces a nitty villain who raised, with what is likely a very strong range. Since he's so strong, we can only 3bet our very best hands, and only for value, since we assume villain will be hard to push off his holding, since it is very likely to already be quite strong. If he's raising {TT+, AK, AQ, KQs}, even though we're ahead of a lot of that range, JJ still only has 47% equity. Not bad, but not great, and once you 3bet him, he's likely ditching the lower part of that range, leaving our JJ at ~36% equity, not good. To get to the point where you have the slight edge on the hand range he'll play for a 3bet, you need to be playing {KK+, AK}, which gives us 52%, just over even. To really have an edge, you need to stick to either QQ+ or KK+, which is about what we said at the beginning, that you need one of the very best hands.
So think about, how do we play against a nit who raises? What hands are we looking to play against them in position? Why? I'm not going to answer this one, I want you to try and think about it for yourself, and determine how you want to play that spot. Think about other scenarios that arise, and what the proper actions are in those spots, not the cards. You might just find yourself starting to think about poker a little more clearly.