I might go a little bigger preflop OOP (with my whole range, obviously), maybe around 14.5k. When you just make it 3x you're likely to get called twice here, since if you don't get past the first guy the second guy rarely folds, so I think bigger avoids this a little more easily. I think 3betting pre is fine in general though, I don't imagine being too unhappy to get it in with JJ here unless the villains are quite tight.

On the flop, you could go a little smaller, but not too much. I wouldn't go much less than 15k. I can't see how you can fold to the shove – there are plenty of players who might check/shove 99 or TT there, and some who might do it with hands as weak as A8 or 98s.

RedsoxNets5 said:

Kalculater said:

I understand your comments to a degree. Why do you NEED to keep your range wide here? Why would we want a wide range here? What do you think the benefits are?

I mean I just sort of figure that our range being wide is better than our range being narrow because it's less obvious what we have? But against a tight ABC player who is only playing his cards then it obviously doesn't matter so I agree with you guys on that.

You're mixing up the difference between our perceived range and our actual range. It's good for us to have a wide perceived range in some spots where our actual range is tight, because that means we get less credit when we have a strong hand. However, if our perceived range is wide, and our actual range is also wide, that means our opponents have accurate information to work with, which makes the hand harder to play. There are also plenty of spots where we shouldn't have a wide actual range in general, simply because our opponent is likely to have a strong hand and our playing a wide range of hands would just be punting away chips.

What you're doing here is to assume that other players are only thinking about 'what we have' in any given hand. This isn't the case. Any half-decent player isn't going to be worried about what you have, they're going to be thinking about your range. So it's much more beneficial to think about the difference between what hands you would actually play in a given spot, versus what your opponents think you would play.

In this particular spot, there's an advantage to having our opponents think we're capable of 3bet bluffing here, since it makes them more likely to 4bet bluff us, so it's a good thing if we have a wider perceived range. But in order to work out whether it's a good spot to have a wider actual range and start bluffing more often, we have to work out whether our opponents are likely to give us credit.

If it's a good spot to have a wider perceived range because we get less credit, we probably shouldn't have too wide of an actual range. If it's a good spot to have a wider actual range, either for value or as bluffs, it becomes less so if our opponents know that, because our perceived range gets wider too, and the gap between the two starts to narrow.