Effective Play Against 3-Bets

Defending against 3-bets is one of the most critical aspects of poker strategy. Mistakes in this situation can not only lead to losing money in a single hand but can also snowball into a negative impact on your overall win rate over the long term.

In this article, we’ll cover the key factors to consider when facing a 3-bet. We’ll discuss how to analyze your opponent’s 3-bet frequency, when to consider slow playing premium hands, and how to choose the right moments for bluffing with a 4-bet.

Table of Contents:

- Opponent’s 3-Bet Frequency

- Position Postflop

- Slow Playing Premium Hands

- Bluff 4-Bets

Opponent’s 3-Bet Frequency

The first thing to focus on when playing against a 3-bet is your opponent’s statistics. The 3-bet stat in Hand2Note 4 reflects how often a player typically 3-bets preflop in all situations.

The higher this percentage, the wider your opponent’s range is likely to be, and the more hands you can defend with.

However, in modern online poker, the overall 3-bet stat doesn’t always tell the full story. Regular players often adjust their play depending on specific positions and table dynamics. For example, their 3-bet frequencies in early and late positions can vary significantly.

In Hand2Note 4 multi-player reports, I selected all regular players with a minimum of 10,000 hands in my database.

Then I filtered for scenarios where they 3-bet from the Middle Position against an open raise from the Early Position:

Their 3-bet frequency is only 3.8%, indicating a narrow and strong range.

Now let’s pin the current report, and in the new report on the right, assign the original raiser to the Button position, while giving the players from our sample the Small Blind position as the 3-bettor. This way, we can compare the reports side by side and identify their tendencies.

As we can see, their 3-bet range in late positions increases nearly threefold to 11%.

To more accurately determine your opponent’s 3-bet range, depending on their and your positions at the table, use a positional and dynamic HUD.

It’s important to remember that you’ll need a large sample size on your opponent to make reliable conclusions. Without sufficient hands, your HUD could mislead you, giving an incorrect impression of a player’s aggressiveness.

For example, if an unknown player gets dealt premium hands several times during a short session in the same position, their 3-bet stat will be inflated and won’t reflect their true playing style.

Position Postflop

Even if you know that your opponent may be 3-betting as a bluff, it won’t always be profitable to defend with a wide range of hands. It’s important to consider who will have the positional advantage postflop.

If you’ll be playing out of position, it’s better to avoid calling with marginal hands, like suited connectors. While these hands can make strong postflop combinations, such as straights or flushes, they present two major challenges.

First, for these hands to be profitable, you need high implied odds. The rare occasions when you hit the nuts must compensate for the many situations where you’ll have to fold and surrender the pot.

For this to be worthwhile, you and your opponent need deep stacks, but in 3-bet pots, the stack-to-pot ratio postflop is much lower than in single-raised pots.

Being out of position makes things even harder. When your opponents have position, they’ll be more likely to pressure you with bets, preventing you from realizing your hand’s full potential, even if you hit a draw on the flop.

In the preflop matrix, I selected the following suited connectors:

In the Hand2Note 4 reports, I selected situations where I called a 3-bet with these hands while playing out of position:

The negative Action Profit and a loss rate of -312bb/100 show that calling 3-bets with these types of hands is a losing strategy.

Slow Playing Premium Hands

Sometimes, a 3-bet from your opponent can be an opportunity rather than a problem. This happens when you have a monster hand, like pocket Aces or Kings.

In most cases, the optimal move is to play straightforwardly and make a value 4-bet.

Nonetheless, in some spots, slow playing by just calling a 3-bet can be even more profitable.

This strategy works well against aggressive opponents who 3-bet with a wide range and continue their aggression postflop but tend to fold to a 4-bet preflop.

By just calling, you disguise the strength of your hand and allow the aggressive opponent to keep putting money into the pot with weaker hands and bluffs. This gives you the chance to win more than if you had made a 4-bet preflop.

We open-raised with pocket Aces from the Cutoff and got 3-bet by a loose-aggressive player in the Small Blind.

In the Hand2Note 4 HUD, we can see that in this situation, our opponent has been 3-betting with a frequency of 12%, followed by a continuation bet on the flop 80% of the time. Additionally, he has folded every time he faced a 4-bet so far.

Given these stats, it’s a good idea to set a trap by just calling, allowing them to show further aggression.

Apply slow play only in position to maintain control over the pot size postflop. If your opponent checks the flop, you can always make a bet yourself, preventing them from seeing the next card for free.

Bluff 4-Bets

Another powerful move against loose players who frequently 3-bet but fold to counter-aggression is the bluff 4-bet. By making a 4-bet, you can force them to fold their weaker and medium-strength hands.

Suited hands with a high card are ideal candidates for a bluff 4-bet. These hands have decent postflop potential in case your opponent decides to call your 4-bet.

We opened with a raise from the Middle Position holding A2 suited, and a regular player made a 3-bet from the Small Blind.

The HUD shows that our opponent’s 3-bet frequency is 15%, and at the time of this hand, he had folded to a 4-bet 73% of the time — 8 out of 11 instances.

In this situation, a 4-bet bluff would be an excellent decision, especially since our hand possesses all the necessary qualities for it — it is suited and contains a high card.

Effective defense against 3-bets is an important part of successful poker play. To make the right decisions, you need to learn how to analyze each situation individually, considering your opponents’ playing styles, positional factors, and stack depths.

Advanced HUDs and the statistics in Hand2Note 4 will help you better understand your opponents’ tendencies and build optimal defense ranges against each of them.