POTD #208 and #209 Two Three Bet Pots in EPT Barcelona

Pictured my grade

I kicked off this week writing about how c-betting was not only a common decision, but oftentimes the only decision for players who had shown preflop aggression,.and nowhere was that more true than three-bet pots. The preflop metagame at the time with certain players involved a lot of four- and five-betting wars, which meant that three-bet calling ranges were often very weak, because people would fastplay anything. Then players failed to find “automatic” continues; if you explained to someone in 2010 that you can never fold QcJc to a c-bet on 7c6h3h, they would think you were a whale. This created a dynamic, which Seth Davies outlined on Twitter last week:

There was a time, I’d say 2010-2015 or so, where it was a great strategy to relentlessly try to get into heads up pots with the lead so you’d get your chance to c-bet and win the pot. Everybody over-folded to flop c-bets so you would see tons very small 3-betting. Not trying to win the pot preflop, but to get called and then have your chance to c-bet flop.

Then people got good at defending vs. small flop bets, largely thanks to solvers helping teach continue thresholds. These very loose small-3-betting strategies became abysmal against people defending better.

One thing Seth did not note in his post was that the idea of slowplaying in position was much more rare. Here’s a pop quiz for you: CO vs. SB, three-bet, 50bbs deep, who has more combos of AA? The CO or the SB? I’ll give you a moment to think about.

5
4
3
2
1

It’s a trick question; they both should have all six combos of AA everytime. However in 2010-2015, people would c-bet boards that were good for overpairs 100% of the time because they felt they had an overpair advantage, but when you are OOP and IP is trapping the correct amount, you rarely have a significant overpair advantage. So if you are facing players who are correctly finding most of the marginal flop peels, can bluff no-equity hands in position, and have overpairs as often as you, why would you auto-bet out of position? In today’s POTD, we look at two hands I played nearing the money of the EPT Barcelona, where I three-bet with air, flopped nothing, and had to determine how I was going to proceed in a world where, even vs. unknowns in an EPT Main Event, “just c-bet 100%” is not the easy solution it once was.

2022 EPT Barcelona Main Event
(1k/2.5k/2.5k) (SB/BB/BBA) 30k Starting Stack. 490 Left. 330 Cash.

It folds to the button (340k) who makes it 6k, I (140k) make it 22k with J♥️T♥️, he calls.

Flop (49k) 8♣️6♠️2♠️: I check, he checks.
Turn (49k) 7♠️: I check, he bets 20k, I fold.

Around one orbit later

It fold to the cutoff (300k) who makes it 5k, I (110k) make it 18k from the SB with Q♦️J♦️, the BB (50k) folds, the cutoff calls.

Flop 8♣️6♣️4♠️ (41k): I bet 25k, he calls.

Turn (91k) Q♣️: I check, he bets 11k, I call.

River (113k) K♦️: I check he puts me all in for my final 56k, I call and lose to A♣️K♥️.