WPT GTO Trainer Hands of the Week: Calling 3-Bets When In Position
Today you’ll be playing in a tough cash game where you open in middle position and call a 4x 3-Bet from the player in the Big Blind. Since you are in position against this 3-bet, you can call with a healthy portion of your initial preflop opening range. Your opponent will have a polarized range consisting of premium hands as well as weaker semi-bluff hands such as suited wheel aces and some suited one gapper type hands.
Even though Villain has a polarized range, you should not be afraid to get value from your bigger overpairs postflop. Since the pot is inflated preflop, many of your overpairs should be willing to get all-in by the river with bets on every street.
When Villain declines to c-bet on the flop and checks, you should often take small stabs with many hands that have reasonable equity now or have backdoor equity. In addition, when a turn card comes that completes an obvious draw and they check, you will often bet small.
When they bet the flop and fire a second bullet on the turn, you should often raise with a balanced range of made hands and draws. This will prevent your opponent from profitably firing second bullets into you with a high frequency.
Finally, you should use the concept of blockers to influence whether you slowplay big hands such as sets. When you hold bottom or middle set, your opponent can have all combinations of top pair. When you hold top set, you block your opponent from having most combinations of top pair. You should be more willing to slowplay top set against raises due to this effect. The lower sets often are included in a range that continues to be aggressive and 3-bets on the flop.
To see more examples and test your skills, you can play through five free solved hands from this scenario.
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Regular play on the WPT GTO Trainer will help you adjust your decisions closer and closer to GTO strategy.
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Use this series of articles to practice the strategies you learn on LearnWPT (or at the table) and test your progress by playing a five-hand sample each week.
