AVP resident pro Benton Blakeman discusses the complexities and strategies behind three-betting in poker.

There has been a decent amount of questions in the All Vegas Poker forum lately about three-betting preflop — when to do it and which hands to do it with. So it seemed quite appropriate to use that as a topic in this week’s strategy article. Considering the depth of this subject, today I will be focusing on three-betting in position, especially from the button and cutoff seats.

Learning the correct hands and correct spots to three-bet is essential to being a profitable poker player in today’s online poker scene. (It's important in live poker as well, of course, but it's much more important online.) Without utilizing the three-bet, players leave themselves vulnerable to being exploited preflop and being denied action when they finally pick up a premium hand. At its core, three-betting is just a game within a game that we play to ensure our hand range stays balanced between top-tier hands and mediocre hands. It also affords us the opportunity to go for max value with our top-tier hands without "turning our hand face up."

Before talking about certain hands with which we should three-bet, let’s discuss the positional advantages of three-betting. Three-betting in position is far more effective than three-betting from out of position. This doesn't mean that we should never three-bet from the blinds, but simply three-betting from the button will yield more long-term profits. By far the most effective use of the three-bet is three-betting a late-position raiser from the button. The reason is that the late-position raiser likely has a much wider opening range than an under-the-gun raiser, which will result in our opponent folding more often to our three-bet from the button.

When three-bet bluffing from the button against late-position raisers, it's best to do it with hands that are at the top of our folding range. What that means is that if you contemplate calling the raise but ultimately feel your hand is too weak to do so, then it's probably a candidate to use as a three-bet hand to balance your range. Examples of these hands include, but are not limited to: a face card with a suited small card (K-7 suited), an offsuit small or middling ace (A-7 offsuit), offsuit connectors and one-gappers (7-6 offsuit, 10-8 offsuit), and baby suited connectors and gappers (5-4 suited, 6-4 suited). Along with these hands, a good player will be three-betting value hands that they are willing to stack off with, such as big pairs and A-K or A-Q type hands. Three-betting a range similar to this should give an active enough image to get action on our big hands, but not so active that we are constantly getting four-bet.

There are hands that are bad to three-bet in position, as well. These hands are normally pocket pairs that we're unwilling to stack off with, medium to large suited connectors, and suited Broadway cards. The reason is that these hands, while not powerhouses preflop, often flop big hands and big draws that can beat an opponents overpair. It would be quite counterproductive to three-bet a hand like J-10 suited just to be faced with a four-bet and have to fold. These are the type of hands that you want to take a flop with and hope to catch a big hand or big draw. Even if you miss, you'll often flop some kind of back-door straight or flush draw that you can float the flop with in position, looking to make a hand or take away the pot on the turn if the raiser takes a passive line.

The next point of interest should be how to react to an early-position raiser. With their range being narrower than a late-position raiser, it only makes sense that our three-bet range should be narrowed some, as well. I would still three-bet the same types of hands, just less frequently than if it were a late-position raiser. Knowing player types and how they react to three-bets also would factor into my decision of whether I should three-bet them or not. Also, with no callers in between, I would opt to three-bet medium suited connectors against the early raiser rather than calling. This adds a ton of deception to our range. The times that the early-position opener just calls our three-bet with A-K or 10-10 type hands we can often win unimproved by betting the flop when they check.

The last thing I should mention is sizing. In standard 100 big blind buy-in games, a three-bet from position should be right about three times the opening raise. For example, I'm on the button in a $1-$2 game with J-7 suited. Action folds around to the cutoff, who makes it $8. I would routinely three-bet to $25 here with a $200 stack. If he calls, I would likely size my continuation bet at about $32-$38, depending on flop texture. With the current 50 big blind buy-in games online, I would three-bet a little less often as a bluff and also a little smaller to keep a greater stack-to-pot ratio. In the same example as above, except with a $100 stack, I would three-bet his $8 open to $18 or $20. This would still leave me with about a 2-to-1 stack-to-pot ratio.

Experimenting with three-betting can be fun and add some excitement and profit to your session. Don't be afraid to try it and see how players react. As a note of caution: This is a strategy that is mostly geared toward online poker. It will work in the live setting but is mostly unnecessary when playing $1-$2 and $2-$5 no-limit hold’em. The players who do it likely profit more than the ones who don't, but ABC poker still can get the money in those games.

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