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<div>I do think there are spots with 25+ bb where we can three bet fold. It gets dicier with <20bb, but you start the hand here with 27bb. If you make it 8bb, you get a lot of folds, and your hand has enough playability that you can withstand calls, even out of position. Especially because we’re not mostly guaranteed to be heads up.
</div><div>The worst case is we get shoved on, and then we have to fold. Which leaves us with 19bb. That’s obviously not ideal, but it is still a playable stack with lots of room to open and reshove with fold equity. So I don’t see the 3bet in this spot as requiring us to call off. There’s a big difference between 27 bb and <20bb. At <20bb, we’re in really bad shape if we three bet and get put to the test. Now if we fold, we’re down to <12 bb, which is a far less playable stack. Also, think about this from V perspective. This 3bet looks really, really strong, and we need to be capable of 3betting in this spot with some hands that aren’t just premium. The best non-premium hands in this spot are a hand just like this. You can represent the board when it comes high and you can make sneaky value when it comes middling. Also, when your opponent calls here, they become quite capped and unless they hit a massive flop (2 pair+), they are going to be hating life when you continue on most flops.
Finally, I’d just say, it may seem like, ugh, we can’t just be giving up 8bb all the time when we have 27bb. And that is of course correct, we need to protect our stacks. But when we flat, we’re much more likely to lose the hand overall (because we’re going multiway and because we’re first to act) AND when we hit a hand exactly like we did, we’re likely to lose far more than 8bb. So all that makes me argue for a three bet with this hand in this spot. I’d be curious on other thoughts.
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