Dealing With 3bets

This article will discuss the strategy of dealing with 3bets when you are not the 3bet aggressor, which can happen a lot in 6 max games, as they tend to be very aggressive.

Generally I think one of the best ways of dealing with 3bets is to either be 4betting or folding to 3bets. How you should react to someone 3betting will largely depend on the strength of your hand, your opponent’s 3betting range, and to a lesser extent your position at the table.

If the 3bettor is an unknown player, then you shouldn’t allow emotions to get in the way, just allow them to run over you and wait for them to make mistakes, and believe me they will. You will stare down at AA on the button, open raise with it, and have the aggressive 3bettor do what he does best and 3bet you in the big blind, and then you can proceed to get stacks in the middle.

When dealing with 3bets, raising/folding is usually the best approach, you never really want to just call (the same thing can be said about other betting strategies) because you will not get involved in 3bet pots with potentially dominated hands. This means that when we raise with AJo in MP and you get 3bet by the player in the CO, it is best to just fold the hand. Most players are 3betting a value range which includes QQ+/AK so we just aren’t doing well against this range. The worst thing to do is to begin calling 3bets with dominated hands like KTs, the flop comes something like K88 and you call a big flop and turn bet only to be up against AK. You would have saved yourself a lot of money if you had the discipline to fold the 3bet preflop.

An alternative would be to 4bet light. If you feel that a player is running over you too often, like if you are opening up your game in the CO and the BTN and an aggressive player is constantly 3betting you, and you can be confident that the player is 3betting light, then it would be worthwhile to be 4betting as a bluff sometimes. 4betting light definitely has its risks and it will not always have the desired result, but it will keep us from getting ran over completely, and like everything in poker, there is a risk vs reward factor. Definitely don’t get carried away doing this because you will definitely begin spewing a lot, but it’s impossible for an aggressive 3bettor to always have a premium hand, and you want to let them know that you can play back at them. By taking a stand, they will also be less willing to 3bet light, which can’t be a bad thing.

In summary, folding to 3bets is usually the optimal play, it will help avoid awkward spots in 3bet pots where you are unsure if you have the best hand.

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