Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
If your opponent is opening to 2.5 BBs
If your opponent is opening to 2.5 BBs and you 3-bet from the big blind to 8.5 BBs, then if your opponent calls 32% of the time or less, it's neutral EV to +EV. That's not even considering that when they call you will have equity in your hand, and it's irrelevant how often they are 4-betting since we're only looking at folding to 3-bets. To really see if any 3-bet is +EV you'd want to factor in X% of the time your opponent is calling, Y% of the time they are 4-betting. But if X% is already neutral or better, then Y% only becomes relevant when determining exact positive expected value. Again, it will be positive because we already know just based on our opponent’s fold percentage the play is break even or better.
When your opponent is calling
When your opponent is calling more than 32% of the time you'll want to make sure you feel confident playing out of position when you're 3-betting with a marginal hand. Some opponents rarely fold to 3-bets from the blinds, so you'll want to avoid 3-betting too liberally with the weaker part of your polarized range. Opponents who fold 50% or less tend to be opponents who are either reasonably good post flop, and don't mind taking a flop in a re-raised pot, or opponents who are generally stubborn and bad, and just can't fold. Look for opponents with low fold to 3-bets and high WTSD percents, and you'll generally be able to sort the stubborn opponents from the reasonably decent opponents.