Poker 3-bet ranges when you face a raise

A 3-bet range is the set of hands you re-raise with after somebody else has already raised. It is a different question from which hands you open, because the raiser has told you something first, and the answer moves with who raised and where you are sitting. If you want the concept rather than the grid, what a 3-bet is covers it.

Two charts below, both for a cash game around 100 big blinds deep, the first 6-handed and the second 9-handed. Both print from one PDF.

Button versus a cutoff open

The most common 3-bet spot in a 6-handed game: the cutoff raises, you are next on the button and both blinds are still behind. You have the best seat at the table for the rest of the hand, so this is the widest 3-bet chart on the page at 5.7% of hands, with another 14.0% called rather than raised.

Download this chart (PNG)

The shape is worth more than the hand list. The raising group is split in two: pairs from jacks up and both ace-king hands, suited and offsuit, which want a bigger pot, and then small suited aces and the suited connectors, plus king-queen and king-jack suited, which are there because they can keep going when the cutoff calls. The hands in between, ace-queen offsuit, king-queen offsuit, the middle pairs, mostly call. They are strong enough to play a pot and not strong enough to want the biggest one, and calling with them in position is the cheapest way to keep the cutoff's weaker hands in.

This is the same grid the preflop charts publish in their facing-a-raise section, character for character.

A blind versus an early-position open

The other end of the same question. An early raiser holds a strong range, you will act first on every street after the flop and the big blind is still behind you when you act from the small blind. So the chart tightens hard, to 4.8% of hands.

Download this chart (PNG)

Where this chart comes from, plainly. The value half, jacks and better plus ace-king plus the strong suited aces from ace-jack up, is taken from Advanced Concepts in No-Limit Hold'em, which describes the small blind facing an early raise as re-raising with jacks or better, ace-king, ace-jack suited and better, plus a handful of small suited aces. The book's spot is a 3 big blind open from the third of three early seats at a 9-handed table, which this chart calls UTG+2. The handful is where the source stops being specific, so the four wheel aces on this chart, ace-five suited down to ace-deuce suited, are our reading of it rather than the source's own list. They are the standard choice for the job: an ace in your hand makes it less likely the raiser holds one, and the same card can still make a nut flush or a wheel.

Two notes before you print it. From the small blind, everything outside the coloured cells is a fold rather than a call, because the big blind is still behind you and a call invites it in cheap while you play the rest of the hand out of position. From the big blind some of those hands are calls, because you close the action at a better price. Queen-jack suited is one: this chart leaves it blank, and you call with it against an under-the-gun open in Poker Skill's big blind lesson. Against this chart's 3 big blind open from UTG+2, the book's big blind 3-bets fewer hands than the small blind, only queens or better, ace-king suited and ace-queen suited. And if the raise came from late position rather than early, this chart is too tight: that raiser holds a much wider range, and the button chart above is the closer model.

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What this page does not draw

A complete 3-bet library would be one chart for every pair of opener and re-raiser, and at a 6-handed table that is fifteen grids, since only a player who acts after the opener can re-raise. This page has two, and the gap is deliberate. The second is for a 9-handed table, the one its source gives.

Our rule for a chart page is that every grid names its source: either it is already published in our chart library, or it comes from poker writing we can point at. Two spots clear that bar today. Drawing the other fourteen 6-handed grids would mean inventing hand lists and printing them at the same size and confidence as the sourced ones, and a reader cannot tell those apart. So we would rather ship two charts you can trust than fifteen you cannot.

For the neighbouring questions: opening ranges for every seat are on poker opening ranges by position, the wider facing-a-raise library is on the preflop charts, and if the raise came from a seat this page does not cover, the honest move at the table is to play the top of your range for value and fold the rest. One spot these charts leave out is a raise with a caller already in the pot. You face it on the button in Poker Skill's squeeze lesson, where pocket queens re-raise and hands like seven-six suited and deuces fold because, in the lesson's words, calling costs the full raise and pushes nobody out.

3-bet sizing

Two numbers cover almost every no-limit cash spot at these depths. In position, raise to about three times the original raise. Out of position, raise to about four times it. That is the price of the seat: acting first for the rest of the hand costs you something, so you charge more to make the opener pay for it.

The other half of sizing is what you do afterwards. A 3-bet builds a pot you have to keep playing, so pick the size you are comfortable barrelling on the flop with, and use the same size with the value hands and the bluffs. A range that raises bigger with aces than with ace-four suited is readable in one session.

How to read these charts

Both grids run ace to deuce, left to right and top to bottom. Suited hands sit above the diagonal, offsuit hands below it, and the pairs run down the diagonal itself. Find your two cards, check the colour, act.

A chart is a starting point rather than a verdict. It assumes the cash game it was drawn for (6-handed or 9-handed, roughly 100 big blinds deep) and an opponent whose raise means about what a raise usually means. Change any of that and the chart bends: against a player who opens everything, more hands become 3-bets; against one who only raises premiums, almost nothing does.

How we built these 3-bet charts

The button chart is the grid the preflop charts publish for facing a cutoff open, a range we simplified ourselves. The blind chart takes its value hands from the small blind's range in Advanced Concepts in No-Limit Hold'em, against a 3 big blind open from the third early seat at a 9-handed table: JJ+, AK and AJs+. Its four small suited aces are our reading of that writing.

3-bet range FAQ