Small Stakes Shorthanded NL Poker Forums

What's up everyone?

This is a spot that I'm pretty much playing horrible in. So we have JJ on the button or co. and we open 3x. The BB who is an aggressive zoom regular and we have got something like a 100 hands on, 3bets and his 3bet% in the BB at that point is around 12-15%. What I can say about these guys is that they will put relentless pressure on you and sometimes their 3bet range is weighted with all Ax or sometimes with pairs sometimes a mix. So in this spot, I don't like to call because like 50% of the time the flop will bring a scare card (and infinately worse hits their 3bet range quite often) and they are always cbetting that board which I can then not really call (given their aggression) nor raise (given that they hit it quite often). That means that when we're going to call, we're basically set mining and hoping to catch some bluffs on low boards. Anyway not a very good situation for JJ I feel.

Then when I consider a 4bet that's turning the hand into a "semi" bluff , but I think it will show an immediate profit given the fold equity in their range and we'd fold to a 5bet shove. I like that line better, but what do we do when the villain flats? Do we give up? Shove any flop?

Or should I approach the hand totally different?

100 hand sample is very small (you can 3bet twice in fr or tree times in 6max from the blind and have 15% 3bet), he could just easily be picking up hands. That said without reads I think it is still more profitable to call then to 4bet as a default and for 4betting I would choose pure value hands I`m ready to get it in with and weak semibluff hands with blocker like Ax, Kx. When you gather more info and notes on the villain then you could maybe shift JJ to 4bet value side.

we ought to be honest about the games these days and in my opinion the majority of regs are people like myself that are a member of a training site and are applying what's taught in the videos. You're right in saying that having 100 hands or 200 hands is certainly not enough to draw definitive conclusions. However, if I had to put things on a balance, I would say that the chances are higher that villain is applying a light 3bet range than him running hot over those hands. Especially in zoom where there is a significant amount of 3betting going on with tonnes of regulars. Hence why I'm struggling with this hand so much because for me its difficult to play against such players.

If you are struggling with this hand, then go through your HEM, pick up ~10 or more such hands and do some reviewing, preflop range constructing and various EV calculations for different possible scenarios (EV for 4bet/call, 4bet/fold, calling preflop 3bet and playing out various flops), buy an hour with a coach, give him your work and go through over those situations, review everything after that and give it a test run at the tables.