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[thaskalos]

Originally Posted by dilanesp

Roy Cooke does that sort of thing in limit. It's obviously a better play in no limit than in limit, but it also carries a significant drawback, which is that in many of these scenarios a call is the same as a 3-bet (i.e., your calling range against a tight UTG raiser heads up should be pretty darned narrow). (The reason it's such a bad play in limit is because the situation is so obviously 3-bet or fold that any good player's call is going to look highly suspicious to anyone paying attention.)

Now, if we stipulate that the UTG raiser is an inattentive tagfish who is going to c-bet close to 100 percent of the time, the play starts to look a lot better.

In general, against a player who is paying attention, you don't to merge a 3-betting range into a null set calling range.

One other observation. I think a lot of players don't realize exactly how hard it is for their opponents to fold big hands pre-flop. For instance, I've been in no limit games where the action goes something like this:

5/5 blinds, $500 stacks. Tight player raises UTG to $20. Reasonably tight player 3-bets to $55. Button calls with AA.

The problem with this play is that if either of the opponents has a QQ+ (which is probably a pretty high probability given this action), you are leaving a ton of pre-flop money on the table here because players are extremely bad at folding QQ and KK. Indeed, even AKs or AQs will often make a call. In contrast, post-flop the board may run out in a way that looks unfavorable to their hand and allows them to lay it down.

And when you add to that the fact that you are giving them a cheap shot at setmining with reasonably decent stack-to-pot ratios, I tend to think this is generally overdone.

I have been playing NL exclusively for the last 5 years or so...and I find that the game is very "situational". The texture of the particular GAME dictates how these particular decisions are made...and rules of a "general" nature don't bring forth the best results. In NL..."general" rules do not "generally" apply.