WPT GTO Trainer Hands of the Week: Defending Against 3-Bets
Today you’ll be playing common spots in a tournament where you open in the Cutoff seat and defend against a Button 3-Bet. When a player to your left 3-bets regularly, you must defend against this by calling with a reasonable portion of your range and play postflop.
Keep in mind that turn and river cards can change the relative value of your hand within your range. Typically, when you are in the upper part of your range on a given street, you should continue with your hand. Static hands like 2nd pair can often drop significantly in your range when cards come that allow you to have much stronger hands.
When you have high equity but vulnerable made hands, you should consider check-raising. Given the shallow remaining stacks, check-raising allows you to very reasonably deny equity to many overcards in Villain’s range.
When Villain checks back on the turn after you call their c-bet on the flop, you should generally be willing to value bet the river with your top pair or better hands. Many players are too passive in this scenario in 3-bet pots. Do not simply be happy to get to showdown if you have a hand well ahead of your opponent’s range.
Typically you can check-call a small c-bet when you have a reasonable Ace high hand with a backdoor flush draw. These hands can turn additional equity and the Ace can sometimes have showdown value on its own.
Finally, don’t be afraid to shove the turn against a second barrel with some draws and reasonable made hands such as top pair or better. This will reduce the profitability of Villain’s second barrels.
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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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The full selection of scenarios for the WPT GTO Trainer are only available to members of LearnWPT, however we’re giving PokerNews Readers free access to the Trainer on a regular basis with the WPT GTO Hands of The Week.
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.
