Alright, let me tell you how I figured out this whole “three betting” thing. It wasn’t like I read a book or took a class, nah, it was more getting smacked around until I paid attention.
So, I was playing poker, mostly online, sometimes low-stakes home games with buddies. Just trying to have some fun, maybe win a little beer money. But I kept running into this situation. Someone would open the pot with a bet, you know, standard stuff. Then another player would raise it up. Okay, still pretty normal. But then, outta nowhere, another player, or sometimes the original bettor, would raise it AGAIN. And my chips would just kinda… evaporate.
I kept hearing folks, especially in chat boxes online or the one guy in our home game who thought he was a pro, throwing around the term “three bet”. “Nice 3-bet,” they’d say, or “He just 3-bet light there.” I nodded along, pretending I knew what was up. Inside, I was clueless. I thought maybe it just meant raising three times the big blind or something equally dumb.
This went on for a while. I’d get confused, sometimes I’d call these big re-raises when I shouldn’t have, sometimes I’d fold decent hands because I was intimidated. It was costing me. Not like rent money, but enough to be annoying. It felt like everyone else knew a secret handshake I didn’t.
Digging In (Finally)
So, I decided I actually had to figure this out. It wasn’t super scientific. I didn’t buy any fancy software. I just started really watching when it happened. I paid attention to who was doing it and when. I tried to remember the sequence of actions.
- Okay, Player 1 bets (that’s the first bet).
- Then Player 2 raises (that’s the second bet, or the ‘2-bet’).
- Then Player 3 comes over the top and re-raises… Ah! That must be it!
It clicked after watching it happen a bunch and mentally walking through the steps. The “three” wasn’t about the size of the bet, it was about the sequence. It was the third action in terms of betting/raising sequence in that round (post-flop is different, but pre-flop this was the pattern I saw). The first real raise is technically the ‘2-bet’, so the re-raise is the ‘3-bet’. Seems simple now, but man, it took me a bit to connect the dots because nobody just explained it plain and simple.
Trying It Out
Once I kinda understood what it was, I figured I should try doing it myself. Seemed like a power move, right? The first few times, I probably looked like an idiot. I likely did it with the wrong hands, at the wrong times. I remember clicking that raise button a third time, heart pounding a bit, thinking “Here goes nothing!” Sometimes I got snapped off, losing a big pot. Other times, everyone folded and I felt like a genius, raking in the chips.
Slowly, very slowly, I started to get a feel for it. Realized it wasn’t just about having monster hands. Sometimes it was about putting pressure on people, making them fold better hands, or isolating a weaker player. It wasn’t just random aggression; there was usually some thought behind it, even if my initial attempts were clumsy.
So yeah, that’s my journey with understanding “three betting”. Went from being totally lost and confused, getting pushed around, to finally observing and figuring out the basic mechanics. It wasn’t some overnight revelation, just a slow process of watching, thinking “what the heck is that?”, and eventually piecing it together through sheer repetition and frustration. Still working on using it effectively, that’s a whole other story, but at least now I know what people mean when they say it.
