Three-bets are typically made, then, when a player holds a particularly strong hand. Until recent years, most winning players played a tight-aggressive style. This meant that, in the example above, the first player would only open the betting with a strong hand, the second player would have to have a stronger hand to raise, and the third marked cards player making the re-raise would be sitting on a monster, like Aces or Kings.
But that’s not the way the game is played these days. Particularly at the high stakes levels, a generation of young online poker phenoms and geniuses have made an ultra loose-aggressive style hugely popular (and highly successful), and this has filtered down into all levels of the game.
This means two things: in the modern poker game you need to start three-betting more, you are much more likely to juice cards get your raises three-bet, and whoever is making the three-bet is going to be holding a much wider range of hands than they were five years ago.
So when do you three-bet, and how do you combat the three-bet? This guide aims to show you how, in three specific situations.
Before we get to those situations, let’s run through the key factors that will help you decide whether to four-bet, flat call or fold against the three-bet:
Early Stages of a Tournament
- When to Three-Bet
In the opening stages of a tournament, you will usually know very little about your opponents’ level of ability and playing tendencies. Effective stack sizes, meanwhile, are usually very high compared to the blinds – between 50 and 200 big blinds.
These large stacks means that most players’ three-betting ranges are ‘polarized’, in other words, they will be either very powerful hands like A♦A♠ or K♠K♣, or highly speculative hands, like medium suited connectors.
The stronger hands are three-bet for value – a player three-betting these hands is looking to get as much money in the pot as possible, to win as much as possible at showdown.