3Betting in No Limit Holdem

Learn Why to 3bet and How to do it the Right Way

The 3bet is one of those makeshift moves that a good player in the mid-high stakes games of no limit holdem will make on a regular basis.

3betting literally means to make the 3rd bet in a round of poker. For example, in the pre-flop stage of texas holdem the blinds are considered the first bet (they are a forced bet), an open-raise is the 2nd bet and any opponent re-raising will be 3betting the pot.

We could take this even further and say that an additional re-raise made by an aggressive opponent will be a 4bet and any raise after that will be a 5bet. But, for the time being in the micro-stakes stakes games of $0.01/$0.02 up to $0.50/$1 you’re unlikely to see much 4betting or 5betting action going on. If you did than I’d be very surprised since most new players will just be flat-shoving by this point rather than making calculated raises worth only a percentage of their chip stack.

Why Do Regulars 3Bet in NLH?

The answer for 3betting is very simply: if you have the best hand pre-flop than you want to get as many chips in the pot as possible. If you have AA pre-flop, which is the best possible hand at this stage, than you’d obviously want to build the pot as big as possible or even stack off with opponents. Against most hands you’re already a 80+% favourite

The second main reason for 3betting pre-flop is that you need to eliminate limpers and LAGs from seeing the flop cheaply and hitting a monster. A lot of players in the micro-stakes up to mid-stakes games will be limping with hands such as 67s or 22 from MP or LP. Theses hands can be very dangerous for you because if they manage to clip a set or straight on the flop than it’s extremely hard to fold a strong pre-flop hand such as AK or AK. That’s why you need to dispense of these limping hands immediately and make it hard for them to see the pot. The main reason that marginal hands such as 67s are great for limping with is because the implied odds for trapping opponents on a random board like 4-8-5 are massive yet they can easily fold and get away from trouble if they miss. Thus, it’s your job to stop these sorts of hands from ruining your day and stealing your pot. I’ve seen way too many new players slow-playing hands such as AK in ring games only to lose a massive ton of chips on the flop because they thought that they were ahead.

In terms of how often you should 3bet (re-raise) your opponents pre-flop in NLH, it depends on your playing style and that of your opponents’. If you’re a loose-aggressive player (LAG) than you might be 3betting up to 10% of your hands – including a lot of bluffs and 3bet steals. Much more importantly however, your 3betting frequency should revolve around your opponent’s tendencies. For example, if your opponent folds 100% of the time to 3bets than you should be 3betting every single one of your hands. This is obviously just an extreme scenario to make a point however.

TAGs will have a much tighter game, and will probably only ever 3bet their top 3% of hands such as AJ+ and JJ+. Anything below these holdings than a new player will most of the time just flat-call a raise pre-flop and hope to hit the flop.

Betting Light

3Betting light is another term for betting with hands that a made for bluffing. When you are 3betting light, you are not 3betting for value but instead you are betting for bluffing. Your aim is either to make your opponents fold and steal the dead money pre-flop or to mix up your table image and balance your 3betting range. Balancing your 3betting range means that it makes it harder for your opponents to know if you are 3betting with a big hand or a bluffing hand – making it harder for them to call you.

This poker article was provided to us by the guys at InstantWinGames.org.