5 Tips for Crushing 3-Bet Pots

31 Jan 2025

Beginner

This material is for beginner players

3-bet pots are incredibly important because the pots you play will be huge! By having a good preflop 3-betting strategy and being able to defend against 3-bets preflop, you will set yourself up very well to play great postflop poker in 3-bet pots! In this topic, I'll go through my top tips for crushing 3-bet pots. These 5 pro tips will help you crush small stakes tournaments and cash games, and make way more money at the tables!

So very specifically, this is when you raise before the flop, someone yet to act re-raises, which is also called a 3-bet, everyone else folds to you, and then you call. You can be either in position or out of position in this scenario, depending on where the 3-better came from. 

This is a very difficult spot for you because you would have re-raised if you had your best hands like Aces, Kings, Queens, Jacks, and Ace King, which means you don't have those hands in your range all that often, whereas your opponent who re-raised before the flop will. So this is going to result in you lacking a lot of the very obvious best hands from your range, and your opponent will have them in their range, which means they are very often going to be favored on a lot of flops, which also means they're going to be betting into you a lot of the time. 

You're going to have to figure out how to deal with aggression in these situations with a range disadvantage. It's a tough spot that you will find yourself in over and over and over again, and in this video we're going to be going through 5 recommendations to help you navigate these spots well.

Tip number one is to call often from in position on connected flops. So when will you be in position? This is when you raise, and then either the small blind or the big blind re-raises, and then you call, and then they make a continuation bet on the flop.

When the flop is connected, meaning there is a straight draw, or a flush draw, or maybe three to a straight already on the flop, you will naturally have a lot of made hands and draws because you're going to call the three bets with a lot of suited Aces, suited connectors, high cards, etc.

You're going to have something very often on these boards. This will allow you to call with a pretty wide range in position and see what develops on the turn. For example, suppose you raise the cutoff, the small blind 3-bets, and you call, and the flop comes 8-7-3 with two hearts. They make a continuation bet, and in this scenario, you call. On 8-7-3, what would be a pretty weak hand to call with, for example, say you had Queen-Jack with a backdoor flush draw. Say it's   . If you have  , you should be calling, even though you just have two overcards. 

With the backdoor straight draw and backdoor flush draw, though, you get to stick around. And then, if your opponent checks the turn, even if you don't really turn much equity at all, say the turn's like a 6, 8-7-3-6, if they check, you need to be bluffing. Why? Because if they have a hand like Ace-King on the turn, they're just gonna fold. 

Same thing with King-Queen, Ace-X, whatever. You're gonna be able to bet in this spot and make them fold out a lot of hands that you are behind. When you are in position, you need to be calling decently often on connected boards, because in addition to having a lot of obviously strong hands, like three of a kind, some overpairs, some top pairs, and some draws, you're also gonna have some junky draws that can pick up the pot when your opponent shows weakness on the turn. 

That allows you to bet, and you're gonna get to pick up a lot of pots that many players simply fold away on the flop immediately. Also, you're gonna find that in three-bet pots, when your opponent's continuation bet, they often use a somewhat small size, which is gonna give you very good pot odds. And when you're getting good pot odds, you need to stick around. We'll discuss that more later. 

Tip number two is to slow play your best hands, especially from in position. And this is because the stack-to-pot ratio is somewhat shallow in 3-bet pots. Say you raise to two big blinds, your opponent makes it seven big blinds from out of position, and you call. 

At this point, the pot already has something like 15 big blinds in it. If you're playing 50 big blinds deep in a tournament, well, it means you only have 43 big blinds more on the flop. If they bet six big blinds, and you call, the pot's already up to 27-28 big blinds. So we don't have a whole lot left remaining in our stack, so we don't need to raise immediately to get money in the pot. 

So say you flop a very strong hand, like three of a kind, or two pair, you do not want to raise, because you want to keep your opponent in the pot. If they're sitting there with ace high, and you have two pair, they're drawing almost dead. Not totally dead, sometimes they're gonna get there on you, but they're drawing pretty much dead. And you want to keep your opponent in when you are drawing dead. This also has the huge added benefit of protecting your calling range, which again will allow you to call flop bets a little bit wider, compared to if you instead raise with all good hands. 

Like that previous example on the 8-7-3 board. If you have pocket sevens, you do not want to raise on the flop, especially from imposition. And if your opponent checks the turn, well, they're checking the turn because sometimes you're gonna be sitting there with pocket sevens. If they know they don't have to worry about pocket sevens, because you'd always raise it, well then that lets it be to where they can bet a little bit more often on the turn, because they don't have to worry about running into your nuts. Which means you're not gonna get those bluffing opportunities with the random queen-jack overcards like we just discussed. 

Tip number three is to defend wide against small bets. Sometimes, especially against very studied players who have studied game theory optimal strategies, they will bet really tiny, like two big blinds, into the 14 big blind pot on the flop. Against really tiny bets like this, you're gonna be getting excellent pot odds. 

Sometimes you're gonna be against a strong hand, and you were barely getting the right price even though you were getting 7-1 pot odds, but you need to be sticking around. Overcards, with any sort of backdoor equity at all, definitely qualify, even if it's just like backdoor straight draw or something like that. 

Also, you're gonna want to raise more often against small bets, because when your opponent bets tiny, it's almost like they're checking. By the way, when your opponent does bet tiny, it's usually gonna be on somewhat uncoordinated boards or boards where they have a little bit of an advantage, but not much, to the point that they want to bet with everything. When they're betting with everything, they will naturally have a lot of medium-strength hands. 

Against medium-strength hands, raising is a pretty strong strategy, especially with hands they don't especially want to call, because that puts them in a really nasty spot with a lot of their medium-strength hands, which is a really good thing for you. 

Speaking of raising, let's discuss which hands you almost always want to be raising with, especially from out of position. You're gonna want to be check-raising with a polarized range. 

Now, junky hands is perhaps not necessarily the correct term, because these junky hands will lack showdown value, but they will have some equity. These are gonna be your draws. So you want to be check-raising with the best hands in your range that are vulnerable to being outdrawn. This is gonna be stuff like weak two-pairs, over-pairs, and strong top-pairs, like top-pair top-kicker, top-pair second-kicker, top-pair third-kicker. These hands are usually good enough, especially as sacks start to get shallow, to check-raise and get the money in. 

You're also gonna want to be raising with your strong draws, like flush draws with an overcard, or backdoor straight draw, or straight draw. These are hands you're going to check-raise with and not fold. If your opponent wants to put their money in, it's not great, you don't love it, but that's okay. 

Finally, you're gonna want to check-raise with a few junky draws. These are gonna be hands like the backdoor nut-flush draw, or backdoor second-nut-flush draw. Maybe a gut-shot straight draw. These are hands that are not loving the idea of checking in, calling out a position, but if you check-raise and your opponent folds, great, and if they shove it all in, well then you can just fold, because you don't have much of anything. 

So these are excellent hands to put in a check-raise with. And by doing this, your opponent will not know if you have a really good made hand that's happy getting the money in, a strong draw that's also happy enough getting the money in, or a junky hand that has a little bit of equity if called, but will fold if re-raised.

Tip number five is to give up when you have junk. When you call a 3-bet and flop totally nothing on the flop, check-folding is fine. This will very often be the case with hands like ace-x suited, the weak ones. Let's say you raise ace-5 suited, someone 3-bets, you call, and the flop comes jack-8-7, and you have no flush draw, or backdoor flush draw. Maybe we have a backdoor flush draw. 

If you check and your opponent bets big, like let's say 8 big blinds into the 14 big blind pot, or if they bet even bigger, like the size of the pot, which is not a good play, but some people will, just fold and get out of the way. This is especially true when the flop is excellent for your opponent's range, meaning high cards and uncoordinated flops, because remember, they have a lot of the best strong highest cards in their range and you do not. In that scenario, you need to be very quick to fold.

Say you have 9-8 suited - you raise, they 3-bet, you call. When the flop comes, king-queen-jack, giving you a backdoor flush draw and a gutshot straight draw to the bad end. If you check and your opponent bets medium, fold. Why? Even though you have some backdoor equity and a gutshot? 

Well, first off, if you make the straight, there's no guarantee you're going to get paid off and your opponent could easily just have an ace, king-queen-jack-10, right? Your opponent's going to keep betting on the turn a lot because they just have a lot of really strong hands on the king-queen-jack board. So recognize that all, call them draws, are not the same and if the board is really good for your opponent, you need to bail out early. 

That's it for today. We really hope you enjoyed today's topic. Good luck in your games, have fun, and see you next time!