3-betting light l Barry's Strategy Corner

What hands should we bluff with preflop and how does this change based on our stack size?

I have been looking at light 3-betting betting strategy recently, because I don't do it often enough, and when I do I pick the old faithful hand of A5s to do it. 

If you don't 3-bet light, thinking players will never pay off your value hands. But what hands should we be bluffing with preflop?

It turns out, your stack depth really matters. 

What happens when the bluff is called?

This is the BB response to a BTN open at 60bbs effective:

This is the same spot, but the stacks are 30bbs effective. 

Ignoring the fact that there is shoving in the 2nd range, the bluffs differ quite dramatically in these two scenarios. 

At 60bbs we are bluffing a mix of connected suited cards like Q9s and J8s. At 30bbs, the bluffs are more hands like Q8o and K6o. Weak hands with a blocker.

Why at 60bbs are we bluffing with suited broadway cards, but at 30bbs are we bluffing with offsuit unconnected high card/low card hands?

It's because of what happens when our preflop bluff is called. 

At 60bbs, we need a very strong hand to stack off. So having bluffs which can hit the flop hard is important. At 30bbs, we are much happier to go with top pair, even if it doesn’t have a big kicker. The stack-to-pot ratio is much lower. 

We have bluffs across the board in the 60bb example, they stick to being mostly A-x to J-x in the 30bb example. This is because board coverage is more important at deeper stacks. We need to be able to have hit low and middling flops, to avoid exploitation, at 60bbs, it's less of an issue at 30bbs. 

Blockers matter in both cases, but blockers matter more at 30bbs where we are risking a higher percentage of our overall stack. 

It's hard to find bluffs as the BB because it's so easy to just call and see a flop, but when you do bluff, the deeper you are, the more robust your hand needs to be.