What is a 3-bet in poker: real 3-bet ranges for cash and tournaments

The 3-bet is one of the first plays you learn and one of the last you really understand. Below are the 3-bet ranges the solver plays in one cash game and one tournament, because the same seat against the same open plays a very different range at 100bb and at 40bb.

All ranges below come from the preflop solutions in Poker Academy. Cash: Normal NL200 GG, 6-max cash, 100bb, no ante, 2.5bb opens. Tournament: CE-Symmetric, 9-handed MTT, 40bb, 1bb big-blind ante, chipEV, 2.3bb opens. Percentages are shares of all 1,326 starting hands unless I say otherwise.

What is a 3-bet, and why is it called that?

Preflop, the big blind counts as the first bet. The small blind doesn’t count, because it’s less than a full bet. The first raise is the second bet, and the re-raise over it is the third bet: the 3-bet. A re-raise over the 3-bet is a 4-bet, and so on.

• Blinds 0.5bb and 1bb: bet number one.
• CO opens to 2.5bb: bet number two, the open raise.
• BTN raises to 7.5bb: bet number three, the 3-bet.

Technically any third bet on a later street is also a 3-bet (bet, raise, re-raise on the flop), but in everyday poker talk the word means the preflop re-raise.

The minimum 3-bet is set by the last raise. If the CO opens to 2.5bb, that is a raise of 1.5bb over the big blind, so the minimum 3-bet is 2.5 + 1.5 = 4bb. In no-limit the maximum is your stack.

A 3-bet builds the pot. Calling keeps it small

A 3-bet often gets described as pot control, and an earlier version of this post described it that way too. It isn’t. It makes the pot three times bigger before the flop, and flatting is the pot-control option. What a 3-bet does buy you:

• Value: strong hands get more money in while the opener’s range still contains worse hands.
• Fold equity: the opener folds part of its range and you win the pot now.
• Initiative in a heads-up pot: a raise pushes the players behind you out, where a flat invites them to squeeze or come along.
• Equity denial: hands that would have seen a cheap flop have to fold.

Linear vs polarised: count the calls

You’ll read about three kinds of 3-bet ranges. A linear (or merged) range 3-bets the top of your playable hands and folds the rest, with very few calls. A polarised range 3-bets the strongest hands plus some weaker hands and calls with the middle. A pure value range 3-bets only premiums and no bluffs, which is an exploitative choice against players who call 3-bets too wide and never what a solver does.

The easiest way to tell the shape of a solver range is to count the calls. Here are five spots side by side:

Cash, 100bb: the button 3-bets or folds

On the button against a 2.5bb CO open, the solver 3-bets 12.5% of hands to 7.5bb and calls only 3.0%. That’s 81% of the played range going in as a 3-bet, the clearest linear range in this article.

• Always 3-bet: AA, KK, QQ, AKs, AQs, AKo.
• Mostly 3-bet: AJo 95%, KQo 84%, KJs 86%, T9s 87%, 65s 85%, and the suited aces A8s to A3s at 77 to 99%.
• The few calls: ATs (74% call), AJs (54%), and part of 99–77.
• Fold: almost everything below, including 55–22 most of the time.

AJo and KQo are not bluffs here. They sit in the middle of a merged range and 3-bet as thin value. The call price is poor: the button needs 2.5 / (4 + 2.5) = 38.5% equity to flat, with both blinds still to act behind.

Tournament, 40bb: the same seat plays polarised

Same seat, same open, different game. At 40bb with a big-blind ante the button 3-bets 9.8% to 6.8bb and calls 15.1%. Only 39% of the played range is a 3-bet.

• Top: AA, KK, QQ and AKs, AKo always 3-bet; AQs 98%, TT 96%, JJ 86%.
• Middle, called 100%: AJs to A7s, A5s, KQs, KTs, K9s, QJs, QTs, JTs, T9s and every pair from 66 to 22.
• Bottom, 3-bet: Q8s 84%, A9o 76%, A2s 66%, J8s 66%, K7s 63%, A3s 57%.

That’s the polarised shape: strong hands and weaker hands 3-bet, the good-but-not-great hands flat. The ante makes the pot 2.3 + 0.5 + 1 + 1 = 4.8bb before the button acts, so a flat costs 2.3 / (4.8 + 2.3) = 32.4% instead of 38.5% in the cash spot, and the opener fights back harder over a 3-bet at 40bb (below). Read that as an explanation of the solver output, not a proof.

Which hands make good 3-bet bluffs

The low 3-bets in these spots are mostly suited: A2s, A3s, K7s, Q8s and J8s on the tournament button; A5s at 74%, K2s at 70% and J7s at 58% in the cash big blind below. They block a part of the opener’s strongest hands (an ace blocks AA and AK) and still have equity when called. Some offsuit aces show up too, like A9o at 76% on the MTT button, where the alternative is folding.

These spots don’t support the old advice that offsuit broadways like KJo or QJo are the typical bluff class. On the cash button AJo and KQo are part of the value region, and in the big blind below KJo and QJo mostly call. Pick bluffs from the chart for your stack and seat instead of from a rule.

Out of position: the big blind

The big blind closes the action and already has 1bb in, so it defends wide by calling and 3-bets a polarised range. In the cash game against a button open it 3-bets 11.5% to 11bb and calls 29.0%.

AA–JJ, AKs, AQs and AKo 3-bet every time. ATs through A6s, KJs through K7s, AJo are pure calls, and 88 through 22 call almost every time. Then 3-bets come back at the bottom: K2s, A5s, J7s, T6s. At 40bb in the tournament the big blind even has a jam: 4.6% of hands go all-in, mostly pairs like 77 and 33 and AJo 75% of the time, next to a 13.3% raise to 9.1bb and a 61.4% call.

The squeeze

A squeeze is a 3-bet against an open and at least one caller. A re-raise over a lone open is just a 3-bet. The caller has usually capped their range by flatting, and there is more dead money.

Now the small blind calls the button’s open before the big blind acts. The price to call improves to 1.5 / 7.5 = 20.0% (it was 1.5 / 5.5 = 27.3% heads-up), and yet the solver calls much less: 16.1% instead of 29.0%. It squeezes 12.7% to 12.2bb.

AA–TT, AKs, AQs, KQs, AKo and AQo squeeze every time. The calls are the hands that play well multiway: AJs–A7s, K9s, K8s and all pairs from 99 down. The low squeezes are again suited: Q8s 80%, T7s 77%, A2s 69%, K3s 64%.

3-bet sizing: one size for the whole range

These are the sizes the solutions use. They are inputs to the simulations (each spot gets one 3-bet size), so they show workable sizes, not the only correct ones:

• In position, cash 100bb: BTN 3-bets a 2.5bb CO open to 7.5bb, 3x the open.
• Out of position, cash: SB to 9.4bb, BB to 11bb against the same kind of open.
• Squeeze, cash: 12.2bb against an open and one caller.
• Tournament 40bb: BTN to 6.8bb against a 2.3bb open, BB to 9.1bb, and all-in as a second option in the blinds.

The usual reasoning: out of position you size up because you’ll play the flop without position, so you want the opener to continue less often. Against more players, as in the squeeze, the size grows with the dead money.

Don’t pick the size by your hand: big with AA, small with a bluff. That tells a thinking opponent what you have. The solutions above give each spot a single 3-bet size and the solver still builds a full range into it, so on the cash button AA and A5s both use the same 7.5bb. The 40bb blinds add the all-in as a second option, and that is a separate part of the range, not a bigger size for monsters. Choose the size per spot: position, stack depth, ante, number of players. Live games often use bigger sizes than online; that part is a heuristic, not solver output.

Fold equity: why 3-bet bluffs need equity

A 3-bet bluff risks the raise to win what’s in the pot. If the bluff never won when called, it would need the opener to fold this often:

The CO folds 63.7% of its opening range to that 3-bet. That’s below 65.2%, and the formula even ignores the two blinds who can still wake up. So a pure bluff doesn’t quite work, and the solver picks bluffs that win when called: suited aces, suited connectors.

In the tournament the gap is much bigger:

At 40bb the CO folds only 40.2% of its opening range, calls 40.2% and jams 19.6%. A 6.8bb 3-bet is 17% of a 40bb stack, so the opener can shove over it, and a bluff that has to fold to the jam loses the whole 6.8bb. That’s one reason the tournament button 3-bets less and flats more. The CO even calls with AA here (100% of the time) and jams KK, because the jam range needs strong hands too.

Why you lose in 3-bet pots

Most of the money in 3-bet pots goes to three ordinary leaks.

Leak 1. The wrong hands in the pot. Flatting AJo or KQo on the cash button, where the solver 3-bets them 95% and 84% of the time, puts you in a multiway pot with a dominated hand. Folding too much to 3-bets is the mirror leak: at 100bb the CO continues with 36.3% of its opening range (19.1% 4-bet + 17.2% call).

Leak 2. Forgetting who has the range advantage. After the BTN 3-bets to 7.5bb and the CO calls, the pot is 7.5 + 7.5 + 0.5 + 1 = 16.5bb with 92.5bb behind. You can work out who that pot favours from the preflop charts alone, without solving a flop. The button’s range is the 12.5% it chose to re-raise. The CO’s range is the part of its open that only called, and that part is capped: the solver 4-bets AA, KK and AKs 100% of the time and QQ 98.6%, so the very top of the range is almost never in it.

A capped range out of position tends to check a lot, and the stronger range tends to do the betting. That much is a heuristic. The section after next puts solver frequencies on it, from a 3-bet pot solved across 184 flops at a stack depth where the numbers are worth quoting.

At 40bb the same line leaves a very different pot. The arithmetic is the whole point:

Two pots behind instead of five and a half. With that little left, stacks go in over one or two streets, so as a rule of thumb top pair is usually strong enough to play for them. Play the SPR you have, not the one from your cash-game habits.

Leak 3. Adjusting in the wrong direction. This part is exploitative and heuristic, not solver output. If an opponent 4-bets a lot, cut the 3-bet bluffs that have to fold to a 4-bet and keep the value. Against someone who folds too much to 3-bets, add bluffs. And when a player is aggressive after the flop, tightening up is the wrong answer: they bluff more, so you catch bluffs wider and give up less.

What the 3-bettor actually does on the flop

The app has a solved 3-bet pot at almost exactly that depth, and it is worth reading before you build habits out of rules of thumb. Spot: Library report, CE-Symmetric 50bb, 9-handed, 1bb big-blind ante. The button opens, the big blind 3-bets to 8.8bb, the button calls. Pot 19.1bb, 41.2bb behind, SPR 2.16. The 3-bettor holds 17.1% of hands, the caller 33.9%.

Note who is where: the 3-bettor here is the one out of position, which is the big blind case from earlier in this article, not the button case. The report solves 184 flops with the same sizing menu on every board, so the frequencies below are comparable across all of them; the flop node offers four of those sizes.

Across those 184 flops the 3-bettor bets 67.6% of the time. Two flops in three, which is a long way from the “check and give up out of position” picture. The bet is also nearly always small:

• 15% of the pot: 24.6% of the time
• 30% of the pot: 33.7%
• 60% of the pot: 9.1%
• 120% of the pot: 0.2%

Everything over half pot adds up to 9.3%. A 3-bet pot at SPR 2 does not need a big bet to set up the stacks: 30% of 19.1bb is 5.7bb into 41.2bb behind, and two of those plus a shove is the whole stack.

The board moves the frequency more than anything else does. By the top card:

• Ace high: bets 78.9% (52 flops)
• King high: 72.6% (29)
• Queen high: 59.7% (29)
• Jack high: 57.8% (17)
• Ten high: 47.5% (18)

Thirty-one points between an ace and a ten, in the same spot, at the same stack. The frequencies are the solver’s; the reading is mine, and it is the ordinary one: a 17.1% 3-betting range is built around the top of the deck, while a 33.9% calling range is not, so an ace-high flop favours the 3-bettor and a ten-high flop is much closer to shared. Either way it is a statement about ranges, not about your hand. AK on T74 is still AK.

Two more cuts from the same 184 flops: paired boards get bet 80.6% of the time (63 flops), monotone boards 57.8% (11). Those two frequencies are measured. The usual explanation for them is a heuristic: a paired flop misses both ranges and the stronger one collects, and a monotone flop gives the wider range more of the suit.

One warning about carrying these numbers around: they come from this spot, 50bb, big blind against a button open, one ante, SPR 2.16. The cash example earlier in this article has SPR 5.6, more than twice as deep, and nothing above transfers to it. Open the report at the depth you actually play.

How to study it

Open the seat you play most against each opener and count the calls. Lots of flats: polarised, bluffs from the bottom. Barely any: 3-bet the top, fold the rest. Then check your real stack depth, because 100bb and 40bb are not the same game.

Cheers! 🙂