Beginner Limit Hold'em Poker Forums

gildwulfs bbv post today that he 3bet 22 OOP in a heads up match. this seemed like a bad play to me

22 is a spew there, you are correct in your assumption. ATM, I dont have more time to respond and will let DD respond. It\'s DDs birthday today so he\'ll be on later tonight I think. I will add my thoughts when I get more time.

Preflop in a heads up match is not so much about achieving maximum value or EV as it is about fostering an image or a style of play. What I mean is for the most part, you will be in coinflip or marginal situations with your hand against his range of hands all the time. You are at best putting in 2 to 3 small bets preflop, so your equity advantage is not as great as in a ring game where you may get your opponents to put in 3x or even 5x as many bets as you (in a multiway pot) when you have an equity advantage.

For that reason alone I think the arguments about equity vs steal ranges and blah blah are useless. The other big thing is postflop playability. You are not going to get rich in HU limit holdem with small pairs, they are going to be extremely marginal winners for you no matter how good you are. They have difficult playability, the reverse implied odds are fairly high (when you don\'t flop a set), and people get extremely stubborn / tenacious / tilty with any pair in a tough HU match, which can be a lot of trouble against a good opponent.

I would prefer to play the small pairs quietly, using them mostly as a bluff catcher against an over aggressive opponent, and realizing that I am going to have plenty of situations to spew a lot of bets into the pot profitably, but very few when I am holding a small pair.

I\'m not saying Gildwulf is wrong, for him maybe this is the best way to play the pairs, but there are a lot of ways to be a good HU player and I felt him implying this was the only way the hands could be played was misleading.

-DeathDonkey

this is directed to deathdonkey but anyone feel free to chime in.

I noticed in gildwulfs bbv post today that he 3bet 22 OOP in a heads up match. this seemed like a bad play to me. my thinking was that it\'s basically a flip or dominated vs any other hand, and there aren\'t many good flops for us. it seems to me like an aggressive villain will be semibluffing us off the best hand a lot, and if we decide to grit our teeth and call down we will be value bet to death.

I usually play these hands passively vs an aggressive villain, calling preflop and only checkraising the really ragged flops that are good for my hand (stuff like 355 Q73). otherwise I use my reads on villain\'s barreling tendencies plus the board texture to figure out whether I\'m going to call down. this way I induce bluffs and don\'t get pushed off the best hand. this can turn into a guessing game though, and it feels like I get value towned a lot.

here are the messages that gildwulf and I exchanged.

from his post:
\"A pocket pair is basically a monster at limit hu. It\'s a standard 3bet for me and my 3bet range isn\'t even that wide (usually). It\'s very important to take initiative in hu play and it makes the hand a lot easier to play, also partially for value and to make your 3bet range more difficult to pin down.

Once you play a lot of HU you also know what boards are really good for your hand as well and can keep betting for value.

Example: opponent raises from sb, you 3bet with 22. flop comes 755 you cont bet, he calls, you are ahead a good chunk of the time on this flop and can bet the turn again for value.

Opponent raises from sb, you 3bet with 22, flop comes paint and you cont bet, he calls, you can fold here pretty safely.

Sb raises, you call pf. Flop comes ...well...flop comes anything and opponent autobets because almost everyone cont bets here. YOu are now on the defensive OOP with a hand and have no idea where you are. I\'m also playing against an opponent who will 3-barrel regardless cause he\'s silly like that. And you are ahead a good chunk of the time. I think call and c/raise flop are pretty good lines too.\"

from a pm:
\"I agree with you that 22 is thin (about 48% equity vs a typical button raising range) value preflop and may be slightly -EV vs button range. 44 is a pretty easy value 3bet preflop vs button range (54% equity vs typical range) and 33 is still pretty easy for value (51% equity vs 75% range).

The problem is that calling you are just [censored] yourself royally against any kind of aggressive player for the reasons I said. You also may get folds from 6 out hands that should peel flops but fold when you 3bet and bet A high or K high flops which will win you a lot of pots, turning this slightly -ev (for 22) into a definitely +EV play.

For the flops you are talking about I don\'t mind a bet/call c/fold if he fires another barrel.
[I asked him about flops like J4s5s, Q76r]

Small pocket pair oop is one of the toughest hands to play in limit hu. I don\'t think there is necessarily a right or wrong answer here. I just generally don\'t like calling oop unless I am going to take initiative on the flop because you are just going to get murdered if you play this way at the higher stakes games.\"

I think he makes a lot of good points, but I noticed that you, DD, disagreed with 3betting this kind of hand preflop OOP so I\'d like to hear your reasoning.

Nick (yourface on 2+2)