Facing a 3-bet: fold, call or 4-bet

Why do you fold so much of the hand you just raised?

Because opening and continuing are different bars. You open a hand because it is profitable to play when everyone folds, which is most of the time. A 3-bet removes that path: now you are playing a bigger pot against a range that has already shown strength. Most opens are not strong enough to clear that higher bar, so they fold.

The hands that continue split into two jobs. The strongest become 4-bets for value, and a few weak-but-playable hands become 4-bet bluffs, chosen because they have blockers or play well when called. The middling hands that are too good to fold and too weak to 4-bet make up the calling range.

Which hands 4-bet as a bluff?

Small suited aces, more than any other shape. Counting how often each hand 4-bets across all fifteen spots on this page, the order after the obvious value hands is A5s, A8s, A4s and A3s, ahead of hands that look much stronger.

Two reasons, and they compound, and both are blocker effects. An ace in your hand removes half the combinations of aces and a quarter of the ace-king your opponent could be holding, so the hand you fear most is less likely by the simple fact you hold one of its cards. And when the 4-bet gets called, a suited wheel ace still makes nut flushes and straights, so the hand keeps playing after the flop rather than giving up.

The mirror image is just as clear. Across the same fifteen spots, 87s, 77, 66, 65s, 54s, 44, 33 and 22 never 4-bet at all. They only ever call. They block nothing their opponent is proud of, and they want to see a cheap flop rather than build a pot they will usually have to abandon.

Does it matter who 3-bet you?

More than which seat you opened from. Two separate things are moving, and they pull in opposite directions, which is why the answer surprises people.

Compare the three spots where the 3-bet is the same size, 7.5 big blinds, and only the seat changes. Opening under the gun, you continue with 48.8% of your range against a hijack 3-bet, 52.6% against the cutoff and 57.7% against the button. The later the seat, the wider their 3-betting range, so the wider you carry on. That is the effect people expect.

Now the blinds. They 3-bet to 10, 11, 12 or 13 big blinds rather than 7.5, because they will be out of position for the rest of the hand and want to charge for it. Against that price the same under the gun range continues with 44.3% against the small blind and 40.2% against the big blind, the two narrowest defences on this page.

So the blinds hold the widest 3-betting ranges and still face your tightest continuing range. The sizing is doing more work than the range width, and it is the part most players never price in.

How much of your opening range actually continues?

Between 38% and 58%, depending entirely on the pairing. Every figure below is counted off the exported solutions on this page, weighted by how often you open each hand in the first place, so it answers how often you actually continue rather than how many cells are shaded.

The bottom row is the one worth staring at. Opening the small blind and facing a big blind 3-bet, you continue with 311 combinations, more than three times the under the gun defence, because you opened 740 combinations to get there. A wide open does not buy you a wide defence. It buys you a lot more folding.

When do you 4-bet instead of calling?

Less often than the charts suggest at a glance, and much less often against the blinds.

Against an in-position 3-bet at 7.5 big blinds, roughly a third of your continuing hands are 4-bets: 77 of 199 opening the cutoff against a button 3-bet. Against a big blind 3-bet at 13 the share falls to 41 of 144. You are being charged more to continue, so the hands that were marginal 4-bet bluffs become folds rather than calls, and the 4-betting range concentrates into value.

That is the practical rule underneath the grids. A larger 3-bet does not make you 4-bet more to punish it. It makes you 4-bet a tighter, more honest range, and fold the hands that were only ever bluffing because the price was cheap.

How do you actually learn these?

Not by memorising every grid. The gap between knowing the right play on a page and finding it under a clock is where the money goes, and closing it is a matter of repetition. PlusEV deals these exact spots back to you and returns to the ones you keep getting wrong. The opening ranges these all branch from are in the chart library, and the positions guide explains why seat decides so much.