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 There seems to be a lot of confusion with regards 3-betting in PLO. Many players understand that hand strength are in general close preflop in PLO, and that as a result, it is quite possible to never fold to a 4-bet. Typically, some hands, most of them including a pair, fare quite bad against AA** preflop. As a result, quite a lot of otherwise decent PLO player almost never 3-bet with these pair hands, for fear of a 4-bet. This is in general a bad misconception.
There are many benefits to 3-betting hands including a pair. Without going into too much details, these benefits are linked to the diversification brought to your 3-betting range. For instance, if you are known to 3-bet good quality pair hands, your opponent cannot play a set of 8 as the nuts on a KQ8 flop if you have 3-bet preflop.
That said, good pair hands play quite well in single raised pots, as trying to flop a set for cheap makes a lot of sense. And indeed, having to fold a decent QQ** hand to a 4-bet in position is a painful experience, knowing that could simply have taken a flop with them.
There is a simple solution to this problem: 3-betting pair hands mostly when your opponent’s range is wide. This typically happens when your opponent is generally loose, or because he is opening from late position.
3-betting loose opponents with strong paired hands has two major benefits:
1. Because your opponent is loose, you do not have to fear a 4-bet that much. If your opponent is a loose opener and a tight 4-bettor (meaning his 4-betting range is rich in AA**), you will indeed have to fold to a 4-bet, but he will have so few AA** hands in his opening range that it does not really matter. If your opponent is a loose opener and a loose 4-bettor, you can call or 5-bet, depending on the situations, knowing that your good KK**, or even QQ**, have an equity advantage against his 4-betting range. We will note in passing that against loose 4-bettors, you are better off simply calling quality hands including lower pairs.
2. Loose openers often call 3-bets loosely, hoping that you have AA** often enough that their informational advantage will more than make up for the equity lost on their loose preflop 3-bet calls. When your 3-betting range is still strong but diversified, these loose 3-bet calls quickly become significantly negative EV, because your loose opponents will not get precise enough information to make up for the equity lost preflop. Even worse is the fact that they will often stack off relatively light on the flop on K** and Q** flops, thinking that KK** / QQ** is never a part of your range.
For reasons mentioned earlier, 3-betting opponents with tight ranges with paired hands does not work that well. The main drawback 3-betting your pairs is that your opponents will have too many AA** hands in their range. As a result, they will force you to fold to a 4-bet too often to make your 3-bet profitable. Of course, if the stacks are much deeper than the usual 100BB, you can consider calling their 4-bet anyway, even if you fear that your opponent’s range is rich in Aces.
By the way, a lot of the above also applies to some of the other hands that have poor equity hands against AA**, such as A***.
Good luck at the tables!
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