There can be no more frustrating situation at the poker table than having a player to your left constantly 3-bet you. It places you in awkward spots, often leaving you unsure of exactly how to respond, and if your decisions aren’t well planned it can cost you a lot of cash.
So how do you combat an aggressive 3-bettor? That depends on a number of factors and in a tournament situation it can be a little more difficult given that your tournament life is at stake, but cash games are a different beast altogether so let’s look at some options.
The most obvious thing to do – and this should always be your default action when faced with this situation – is to narrow your raising range. If you are sitting in the cut-off and know for a fact that the button is going to raise you almost every time, then stop opening with your suited connectors, weak Broadway hands and weak Aces. That’s never going to work out too well for you.
Instead, devise a range that you are willing to both open and either call a 3-bet with decent equity or 4-bet with the plan to call your opponent’s shove.
If your opponent is bordering on wildly aggressive, it’s time to set an exact range with which you’re happy to get it in. That’s a tough thing to quantify with great accuracy, but it might look something like 8-8+ and A-Q+ – the idea being that this range is comfortably ahead of the hands your aggressive opponent is representing by their actions over time.
Sometimes, though, you can send messages to your opponent that may actually make them think twice the next time you open pre-flop. If you’re out of position with A-A, it can be extremely effective to flat a 3-bet and check–raise the flop. In position, such as when you open on the button and are 3-bet by the blinds, flat-calling and calling down 3-streets on all but the ugliest of boards is also a great way to throw your opponent out of whack.
Another great tactic when in position against highly aggressive opponents is to start calling with good drawing hands – suited Broadway hands, suited Aces etc and so forth provide a great chance to put your opponent to the test. The idea here is to call if you flop a top pair sort of hand and re-raise any C-bet with a drawing hand.
As always with poker, you’re not going to succeed by stumbling along blindly, nor by repeating the same mistakes again and again. But if you pay attention to what’s going on and develop a plan as to how and why you’re going to combat it, you should soon find yourself turning the tables on your aggro opponents.
