Poker : Dissecting your Three Bet Stats

The three-bet. The epitome of strength. The diamond studded iPhone. The Ferrari and the hot tub. It’s just one of those very cool things to do. But the casualness of cool carries a cost. If you don’t get your three-betting spot on, then you will bleed money like a company trying to sell vinyl records to a 22nd Century disco.

As they are so costly, it’s imperative for continuous improvement that you set time aside to review this part of your game. It simply isn’t good enough to try and do this based on memory alone, despite most top-flight poker players being almost eidetic.

This is where PokerTracker (PT) and Hold’em Manager (HEM) come in very handy indeed. 

These two sexy statistical sorters allow you to find that needle in a haystack. By merely filtering your hands to show losses in three-bet pots, you can jump straight to the problem. It is a triage system, and it works well.

When analysing three-bet spots, you need to break your filters down even deeper. Take position, for example. 

You can interrogate your heads up display (HUD) to tell you how much you have won or lost by position. Are you playing too loose from the blinds? Is your game out of position as good as you think?

You can also filter your data by hand type. Do you have a high percentage win rate with your premium hands and quite the opposite with your suited connectors? Are your three-bet bluffs even making a profit and if not why not? 

What is your post flop play like in three bet pots? Are you losing your money on the flop, turn or river? Once again you have filters that can expose this mould before it turns into decay.