Facing 3-Bet All-Ins

After isolating limpers there’s going to be many times someone will be shoving all-in against you. Preflop equities being as close as they are and the amount of money already in the pot, there simply isn’t much room to 3-bet non-allin.

Calling all-ins really comes down to two parameters. The pot odds and your opponent’s range.

Let’s look at a common example 6-handed 100 antes deep:

UTG limps

Hero raises to 10a in CO

UTG goes all-in for 99

After posting an ante and raising to 10a, Hero needs to call 89a into a pot of 205a, which means you need ~43% equity or more to make a profit.

We won’t go in-depth about estimating the range of hands our opponent could be shoving in this article. If our opponent thinks we are ISO-raising relatively wide, his range could be something like JJ+, AQo+, AJs and JTs. Against this range only QQ+ and AK have 43% equity or more.

If we take the same example, but in this case we were offered pot odds of ~40%, suddenly TT+, AJs+, AQo+, KJs, KTs, QTs, JTs, T9s, 98s are all profitable calls, although some hands only slightly over breakeven. This just shows that in 6+ a small change in pot odds can make a lot of hands profitable calls. That’s why it’s important that you are very aware of the pot odds you are getting and have knowledge of which hands have good enough equity against your opponent’s shoving ranges.     

The two equity tables pictured below are from our Starting Hand Charts Vol. 3. You need 42% equity or better to make a profitable call in these two examples.

Standard limp shoving range is defined as:

JJ+, AJs+, JTs, AQo+ (9% of hands)

Weights: <%50: JJ; AJs; JTs> 

We have weighted some hands at only 50%, as we think our opponent doesn’t always shove these hands.

Wide limp shoving range is defined as:

 TT+, ATs+, KQs, JTs, T9s, AQo+ (13% of hands)

The numbers above the hands is the EV of calling all-in in antes. E.g. QQ wins 9.84a on average against a standard limp shoving range when you need at least 42% equity. Against the wide limp shoving range you can see many hands become marginally profitable. Please note we have considered an average rake of 3.5a in these numbers.

This was just a quick example about handling 3-bet all-ins. There’s more content in our Starting Hand Charts Vol. 3 including 8 equity tables (examples above) picturing which hands are profitable to call against standard or wide ranges facing different pot odds and stack sizes.