Some players never believe you when you raise a fairly dry flop. By raising, you represent such a narrow range of hands for value that a thinking Villain will not give you credit for it. This is probably true because we would slow-play QQ on Q72 suited almost always. We will just call the flop with a weak top pair or medium pair. If Villain is smart enough to recognize when your value range is really narrow, and if he is capable of 3-bet bluffing or floating out of position and betting the river if the turn goes check-check, then a dry board is a great spot to min-raise a c-bet to induce a bluff.
The following example is a hand I played several years back against a tough aggressive player at 5/10.
He was sitting on several of my tables and I noticed that he would shove all-in on the flop with overcards if you min-raised his c-bet in a 3-bet pot. I picked up
on the button and raised preflop. He 3-bet from the SB and I called. The flop was
and he c-bet. Normally I’d just raise big or shove it in, but after seeing his bluffy tendencies, I decided to min-raise. He immediately shoved with KJo.
Most players at the micro-limits and small stakes are not capable of Villain’s move. The purpose of this example is to show you how you can manipulate your opponent if you pick up on some of his tendencies. If you face a player who is capable of doing it, then you now know how to exploit him.
As you move up in stakes, you will realize that there’s more value to fast-playing your hands than slow-playing. As players get better, it’s more difficult to trap them. However, a lot of players want to make hero calls so if you’re playing your strong hands aggressively, you will get called more often than you think. Here’s another example.
You raise pre-flop with
in the CO and the BB calls. He’s a good aggressive player. The flop is
Almost everyone calls in this spot. You want to let him continue bluffing his hand. However, if he is smart, he will shut down on the turn, since you will have a hand stronger than Tx way more often than a float. So, if he is aggressive enough, you should 3-bet Villain’s check-raise more often than call. He has been in this spot many times and every time someone calls a check-raise, they have a strong hand. By 3-betting, you are taking a different line and he may go crazy and try to bluff you or float out of position to take it down on a future street.
4-betting
You generally want to 4-bet a hand that either cannot profitably call a 3-bet (A3o, KJo) or that you want to go all-in with pre-flop (QQ+/AK). Having an ace or king in your hand is great because of hand elimination. There is less chance that Villain holds AA, KK, or AK. Don’t 4-bet with T7o because you want to least have decent equity in the pot if he does call; choose T7s instead. T7s gives you more semi-bluffing opportunities where you can bet the flop with a flush draw and follow through on the turn. You can also bet the flop with a backdoor flush draw and continue the aggression when you pick up a flush draw on the turn.
For example, you c-bet with
on a flop of
and the turn is an
It’s also important that you don’t 4-bet with hands such as 55-88 or T9s. Assuming stacks are deep (150BB), it’s better to just call his 3-bet with these hands because the implied
odds are high and there are little to no reverse implied odds (your hand is rarely dominated).
Once stacks get deep (150BB+), I would 4-bet with a wide range of hands against habitual 3-betters. There are a few reasons for this. It’s tough to counter my play because stacks are so deep. If I 4-bet big, which is a little more than double his 3-bet size, then he won’t have odds to call pre-flop to play post-flop. I may have aces or kings. Most importantly, players rarely 5-bet bluff shove for 150BB+, and like to play tight when stacks are deep, so I take down the pot pre-flop a lot of times.
4-betting is usually a reaction to your opponent’s 3-betting tendencies. A player who has been 3-betting a lot and/or folding to 4-bets frequently is a prime target to 4-bet light against. The standard of today’s game is to 4-bet 2.1-2.5 times the 3-bet size. So if UTG raises to 4BB, and Button 3-bets to 12BB, you should 4-bet to 25BB. This is good for a couple of reasons:
1) If you’re bluffing, then you risk less than a third of your 100BB stack and force your opponent to risk his entire stack.
2) If you’re 4-betting for value, then you also encourage Villain to come along with hands that might fold to a shove. You may also induce him to 5-bet shove with a worse hand.
You never want to put in more than 30BB of your stack pre-flop because you do not want to commit to the pot with a weak hand. If you 4-bet to 40BB and he shoves, you would need to call 60BB to win 140BB—roughly 2.3-to-1 odds. This means you will have to call a shove with a hand as weak as A2s or 65s against his shoving range of QQ+/AK.