Hello friends! Here's a hand I played at Bodog that give-me some doubts.
The buttom limped,
SB (53BBs) raises 5BB, now the pot is 7.
This 5x bet didn't surprised me, I'm my read he could be doing that to punish the limper.
So he could be doing that with KJ+, AT+, QJ+, or some premium.
Hero in the BB (92BBs) with 99, 3bets to 12BB, pot now 18BBs
Button fold, and SB 4bets to 30BBs leaving 27BBs behind.
To final pot was 43BBs.
I decided to fold but I was wondering If I should just called preflop, or jam aganist I'ts 4 bet...
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As Nathan Williams always says: before taking any action, always consider stack sizings. I don't know why Hero is playing broken stack, it shouldn't, it makes our actions less profitable.
Small Blind position usually has a capped range. Let's dive into it:
1 - Small Blind is the worst position ever. Villain has to put more blinds on the pot and there's still the Big Blind and the limper to act.
2 - Small Blind is always out of position. On these low limits players almost always will be playing only the most strong holding from the SB, so the range is not only capped but unbalanced. A 5 blinds raise preflop means that SB is screaming that he wants to isolate the Big Blind to play out of position versus the limper on the button and SB is trying to make the pot grow as soon as possible to try to take as most blinds as possible of the limper.
3 - Small Blind is short-stacked, nearly 50 blinds which means that we are neither calling nor making a 3-bet here because once we hit a monster hand on the flop we are not getting paid enough postflop to justify either our call preflop or our 3-bet. Avoid to 3-bet players that are short-stacked.
4 - Small blind has positional disadvantage: Small Blind cannot simply call or raise with any kind of junk because it will play out of position no matter what. Which means that most of times that SB raises preflop, either versus a limper or a 3-bet, they most likely will display the most strongest holdings.
As other have said I think that calling preflop COULD be a more profitable move if both Hero and Villain were 100 blinds effective stack. None of them are. We are calling a 5 blinds raise to see a flop that we no ideia if we are able to
bluff the opponent out of the pot or to play a 3 way pot where, in the best case scenario we are winning 50 blinds instead of a 100 blinds. So we are folding here.
A 3-bet preflop is also not a good option, for the same stack reasons.
Considering this range you assign for villain, which I think it's correct, we own 46%
equity, which means that villain must fold at least 46% of times to make our 3-bet automatically profitable. And I don't think so, once SB raises 5 blinds preflop that it would fold to any 3-bet.
So, summarizing:
1 - Play deep stacked ALWAYS! Always play with 100 blinds effective stack, put the auto top up chips option or do it manually once you get down on your chips.
2 - Before entering any pot always consider position and stack sizings! What's the point of making a 3-bet preflop either for value or for bluff versus a player that has 40, 50, 60 blindish? Why are we calling to setmine when villain has only 30 blinds to give us when we hit our set? That's not profitable, we make all of our action thinking one step ahead, we do it preflop already knowing what is going to happen on the flop, turn and river, otherwise we don't do any action, we fold.
3 - We are not playing
hands we are playing our opponents! It doesn't matter that we have JJ from the Big Blind once a NIT player raises from UTG and a regular 3-bets in position. We fold our JJ and wait for another situation. Always remember we are not playing the hands.
