When you get to the mid to late stages of a tournament, it’s really important to be guessing people’s three-betting range. Picking the right spots to gamble hard against light ranges can be extremely important in order to find edges that others might miss. A really interesting back-to-back example happened in a £3,250 GUKPT event I played recently.
A guy opened in the hijack seat (two to the right of the button) with a relatively short stack of around 9k at the 400/800/a75 level. The villain behind reraised to isolate, got it all-in with 8-7 offsuit and lost to pocket Tens. At this point the villain had not played too many pots, and this was a move I hadn’t seen him make while I’d been at the table (we were a couple of hours in).
An orbit or two later, the same first player opened in the hijack to 2.2k with maybe 18k total, the same villain shoved for 21k total and I had 8-8 in the small blind with a stack of about 36k. The big blind had about 20k.
I had a feeling that the initial opener was weak – maybe not total air but not the strongest hand, and not something that could stand a lot of action. The villain was a solid live pro, and I knew he’d definitely be aware of this. At the same time he’d also shown a propensity to be very light. This would be a great spot for him to reverse his previous looseness and actually have the nuts, but I had to discredit his strength just because of how ridiculously wide he’d been before. Also by the way he shoved (a huge overbet) I was ruling out the very top of his range, say K-K+. If he’d shown something like 2-2 or K-Q in the hand before where he was raising 'wide' but not 'potentially no equity wide', I might have found a fold. As it was I had to account for him being at his tournament breaking point where he was trying to push the action, and I definitely had just enough of a hand to call the shove cold.
As well as this, the original opener could fold almost everything, up to T-T/A-Q and maybe even J-J/A-K, because there would be two relatively big all-ins in front of him and he would probably not be aware of how light I was calling. Saying that, I have to have some strength to call a 26BB shove cold. I called, he folded A-T offsuit face-up and the villain had A-6 suited. A great spot for me, with only one overcard to my pair and an Ace dead too. I won the pot.
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Two hands later, the villain to my right (we were now playing eight-handed) opened to 2.2k and I was in the cutoff with K-Jo. The villain was young (21-26) and seemed to be playing a fairly competent game. He had a very big stack when I came to the table, and though he’d got a bit unlucky he still had around 60-70k.
Anyway with around 60k myself I thought it was a great spot to three-bet light, to put the pressure on him and be hyper-aggro. I think I win a lot of the time preflop with this move and have some manoeuvrability post-flop with good high-card strength. So I three-bet to 4.8k with my K-Jo, only to see the button ship it in for 20k total with 7-7. He was also a young player and definitely seemed competent.
This was an amazingly good spot for him to shove because, for the same reasons I isolated/called with 8-8, he knew I was so wide that I could fold a high percentage of my hands. My range was polarised to hands that I can always call with or never call with. I was likely to have A-A or K-7s type hands. In that spot my three-betting range could have been between 25-35% of my hands, but I could only call with around 20% of that range. With 8,800 in the middle, he could potentially increase his stack by 44% without showdown around 75% of the time, and even when called would still have at least 30-35% equity.
Against other opponents his shove would have been disastrous. However in this particular situation it was extremely good because he correctly deduced my three-betting range. If you can do the same you’ll pick up chips at a crucial point and help speed yourself towards the final table.