I dont play a tag style, i play about 33% of my hands. Playing pots 6 ways isnt finesse, its just bingo, hit a monster or fold. Heads up on top of gettiing FE by just betting 90%+ of flops, you can extract value with TPMK just as well as you can extract value with 2p or trips 6 ways, because people loosen up HU, and once theyve finally called your flop bet they dont give up, so they will call you down with any pair, and you end up with as much action as a 6 way pot.

Raising is an isolation play, if youre trying to get it to go 6 ways, then raising really has no purpose beyond bloating the pot, youd be better off limp/calling like the rest of the fish.

position, skill, aggression, and a strong range all play better HU, it is across the board a better situation for good players.

Yes, you obviously have to fold more often, but no you don't always have to hit a hand. In the course of a session, I'll often find myself raising flops or raising turns or underbet bluffing and sometimes overbet bluffing with very little equity in multiway pots, and I do so very profitably. That's not to say I'm just randomly clicking buttons. I simply look for +EV spots given my range and image and the range and tendencies of my villains. Most players never bother looking for a lot of these spots in multiway pots, but they definitely do exist. And on top of that, the more players there are, the more spots there are to value bet when you do hit a hand...

I guess bottom line is that if I raise pre, I generally just don't care how many people have called. Yes I win the pot more often when it goes heads up, but it's more likely that I'll win 20-40BBs+ when it goes multiway. That being said, the types of tables I'm most profitable at do seem to be the ones where everybody calls pre, and I've 3x'd or more my initial 200BB BI as some random MAWG complains and cries about "bingo poker."

As you can see from the responses, it really is game dependent.

My tables used to be quite passive with a lotta postflop morons who would pay off multiple streets with lol hands even to the table nit who's sitting OOP. Anything other than limping in with these small pocket pairs would be fairly lol, imo.

But, over time, the tables I play at have changed. They are still very loose preflop, but they are also a lot more aggressive, and they aren't as payoff stationy postflop, especially vs the table nit who's sitting OOP. So my thinking is that folding small pocket pairs in EP is now best.

ETA: Regarding a table default: building bloated pots OOP with marginal hands against unknowns seems like suicide; I definitely wouldn't have that as my default line until I had a much better handle on the table.

Ggamedependent,imoG

First off, I don't post much here, so take this TL;DR post with a grain of salt. There are very few prolific posters on here that I tend to agree with. Avarita happens to be one of them for the most part. Not that the others aren't valid, just that they play a different game or in different games than me.

I am a MAWG rec player. I don't rely on poker for income, but I play a lot. I have played in 9 different casinos and untold underground games this year. What I am advocating here just doesn't work well at 1/2 and 1/3. Not because of the number of BB's but because of the percentage of our stack we must commit relative to the average stack size at the table.

For example: At 1/2 with 100 BB's - $200 effective stacks, if the standard open is ~$10-$12, we can't really have a wide opening range in EP because we have to commit too large of a percentage of our stack. Same thing at 1/3 when the standard open is ~$15=$18. If we try to 3X open from early position at a full ring table to $6 or $9 in these games, the relative bet size just isn't big enough to discourage a squeeze from later positions, and our stack depth is too shallow to make a call profitable.

In these games, big card value goes way up, so you sit around waiting for them and then figure out how to get the most money in preflop and the rest in on the flop or turn. No real secret here I don't think. Me personally, I would rather heat up a sewing needle with a cigarette lighter and slowly jab it into my eye than play in these games.

But when we move up to 2/5 with $500+ effective stacks, a 3X raise with our entire range pre-flop becomes much more enticing. This does 2 things.

1) It allows us to play a very wide range of hands in EP. And by EP, I mean 1st into the pot. 22+, AXs wheels, A10s+, SCs and middle suited 1 gappers. Odd by some standards, I don't like A6s-A9s as they generally only play post-flop for their flush value and don't like A10-AQ off or any other non-suited broadways. We are trying to hit flops that have the potential to make the NUTZ, not hands that have top pair or two pair value.

2) We expect and WANT these hands to go multi-way to the flop. One of my biggest peeves is 'raise big pre so you only get 1 or 2 callers.' Why? So you can get it HU and C-Bet the 70% of the time you miss the flop and get a fold and win a tiny pot? By that logic, when you flop big and value bet, they fold and you win a tiny pot as well. What do you do when you C-Bet air and get called? Is he floating? On a draw? Do we barrel turn? c/f? What if turn goes c/c? Do we barrel river? Beats the hell out of me, but all options seem bad, especially leveraging a good chunk of our stack against unknown fold equity.

The 3X Raise: Ideally we want to get to the flop with an SPR of 10+. When we raise to $15 and get 4 callers, the pot on the flop is $75 and we need the short stacks to be at least $500 and hopefully most of the table is closer to $1000. Weak/Tight play anyone? When we whiff the flop, 'most' of the time we simply c/f. Somebody hit that flop, it wasn't us, and you have little to no fold equity against multiple opponents.

If we are, and we should be, playing a max stack of $1000, we can do this 10 times in a row, committing a paltry 1.5% of our stack pre, and only dwindling our stack by 15%. This is obviously a generalization and rarely happens in game. I think a lot of people who simply fold these hands pre will be surprised at how often they connect with the flop and you can continue.

What do we do when we connect with the flop. Well a lot depends on the players in the hand. (More on this later) Play accordingly. If they are mostly calling stations, bet for value when we have a made hand, and c/call when we have a drawing hand. Most of the hands we are going to play don't start to really shine until the turn or river. Remember, we don't really semi-bluff because we are up against multiple opponents and have little fold equity.

And that is a good thing. By having little fold equity, when we get to later streets in the hand, a lot of opponents feel committed. YES! You can get paid when the front door flush comes in. YES! You can get paid when the obvious straight hits. Why? Because we raised pre from early position. Most players still are going to put you on big cards or LOL AK and are going to look you up.

What happens when and if players begin to adjust and fold? Ahhhh... remember our Weak/Tight flop strategy? Shift gears and c/call favorable boards and bet them off of their hand on the turn or river. Again, this is player dependent. If we find that players are playing fit or fold against us, then it's bombs away. Remember, one of our biggest weapons is that we are deep stacked and we can put our opponents stack at risk at anytime. Even if it means over betting the current pot size. Relative bet size and 'oh crap how much of my stack am I going to lose if I make this call and I am wrong' are HUGE in our opponents mind.

Our image is also very, very, very important. Typically since we are playing so many pots, our image is going to be bad lag, weak or just plain bad early on. But when big money starts going in on later streets and we show up with the winning hand over and over, and we now have a large stack, people start staying out of our way and we can open up our post-flop game.

'That's all well and good you idiot, but what do we do with this range in late position?' That is one of the other side benefits of this strategy. A lot of times and I mean a lot, the table will adjust and start betting smaller pre, BUT only with hands they may have otherwise limped. They can't help themselves and still bet the top of their range with a more standard bet size. Do you realize how insanely easy this is to play against? 'Hey dude, thanks for telling me you have JJ+, AKs. Really appreciate it.' I fold.

What about the times we 3X with our premiums in EP and have to c/f the flop? Aren't we giving up to much EV? Yes, we are is the simple answer. I have no hard numbers to back this up, but I think we more than make up for that when we get premiums in LP. When the table is 3X with multiple callers, when we get premiums we can 3bet larger. The original raiseer usually isn't good enough to fold because that is weak, and we get the pot HU or at most 3-way with a huge equity advantage. Even if one or both opponents fold on the flop, we still make more in dead money than we do when we raise big from EP.

With the rest of our range, we simply call and play the pot in position. If we can play these hands well in EP, it should be a no-brainer how to play them in LP.

Blind Play: Here is where I am still fiddling around about what to do. Right now I fold everything except premiums and raise that range. Occasionally I will call with AXs but don't feel like this is all that good. Raising and getting paid from EP and calling and trying to get paid out of the blinds are 2 very different things. The old 'big blind special huh?' comes into play too often. Doesn't really bother me to just fold most of my range and move on.

Reads at the Table: Another one of my biggest peeves. When a thread starts with 'Just sat down, so no reads, how do I play XY hand?' I have no clue and I doubt anyone else does either. Even worse is 'Only been at the table for about an hour, so no real reads.' Put down your phone, turn off the i-pad and jerk the buds out of your ears and start paying attention!

Luckily I play in a lot of games where I have history with most of the players. I know their game. They think they know mine. They play mostly the same game. I like to think I play a different game against them based on what my image at the time is. For the most part it's easy game.

In an unknown game with a 200 BB buy in, I get $2000 at the cage. $300 green and the rest in black. When I sit down I put the greens and 2 blacks in play for a total of $500. I call this my test balloon. Don't really care if I lose it, but would obviously like to run it up. But my first half-hour to hour at the table is mostly spent FOLDING. Listen to the table talk, what is the average pre-flop sizing, how many callers, what range are they playing, how many pots are they playing, are they calling down light or playing fit or fold? etc..... Why in hell anyone would sit down and start playing 'their' game without knowing anything about the other players is beyond me.

Once we get a feel for the table, we can begin to put our stack to work. See if our reads on the other players are correct. Put them to the test based on our reads. And most importantly we can see how the table is going to react to our $15 raises. Hopefully they go multi-way and the only time they get 3-bet is when they have premiums and we can exploitively fold. Once we feel comfortable, we can top up to the max at the table and have some fun.

I'm sure that I here, 'Hey, come try that BS at my table and I'll 3-Bet you with impunity.' Well good for you, but in my experience it just doesn't happen that often. And when it does, I'll start 4-Betting you with impunity.

And no, we aren't playing bingo in a bloated pot. There are tons of hands we are still folding. Early on, maybe, but once the game progresses we can make more imaginative plays. We are generally raising pre-flop and still have initiative in the hand, especially when we start draining our opponents stacks our fold equity grows accordingly.

Just my two cents and hopefully someone else might get something out of this style of play. It won't work short stacked or short handed or in most 1/2 or 1/3 games. But, I have had great results with it at 2/5 deep stacked games. YMMV

I'm not going to quote your whole post CowboyCold, but let me just say you have some very good points in there. Even though most of them won't apply to me (I'm mostly playing $1/3 with a $200 - $300 buyin) I can certainly see the value in a lot of your concepts.

Just to clarify though (and despite what the book I'm currently reading says), you're saying to fold the baby PP's and SC, at least from earlier position? You're also saying that big cards (even unsuited) are much better because we're looking to flop TP or Top2 and GII w/ 100BB's or less?
That's interesting to me because I'm currently reading a lot about how suitedness is much better and hands like KJo, OJo, KTo, QTo are worse than hands like A5s or 89s. The book does touch on how this is even better when deep stacked but still says this holds true at 100BBs in the typical 1/2 and 1/3 game. This is mostly talking about EP, as ofc our range can open up from HJ - BTN.

Speaking of small PPs in early position... Here's a fun HH.

(2/5). Hero straddles UTG to pay missed blind. 3 limpers after and two in the blinds. Hero raises to $65 with 44. Only villain on BTN calls. Flop K85r. Hero bets $50. BTN raises to $165. Hero raises to $375. BTN Folds. Hero shows the bluff.

[ About an orbit later, same villain raises to $20. Folds to hero in SB. Hero raises to $150 with KK. Villain calls. Flop comes Q high. Hero bets $150. Villain shoves for about $650 total. Hero calls and KK>JJ to felt villain. ]

My point was, in my experience, is that at 1/3 with $200 - $300 stacks and the standard raise is $12-$15 pre, SCs don't play all that well because of the number of times you have to c/f on the flop. In my example of 10 hands in a row, that would be $150, almost all of a $200 stack and half of a $300 stack. We simply can't get enough value at those stack depths when we hit to make up for that.

The same goes for small to medium PPs. They play mainly for their set value. My rule of thumb is 20X the bet size needs to be in our opponents stack to make a call profitable. At a $15 open that would be $300 effective stacks and that just doesn't happen that often at 1/2 or 1/3.

I have played in one 1/3 game with a $500 max buy in, but you could rebuy up the biggest stack at the table. Early on stacks were relatively shallow, but as the night progressed, effective stacks were $500+. This is when I find it profitable to start playing these hands, even though we are raising 5X to $15 pre-flop. Rule of thumb for me is to not raise more that 3% of effective stacks and the closer to 1-1.5% all the better.

As a matter of course, I don't like big unsuited cards. I might raise them in LP over limpers, but that is to get it HU hopefully and take down the dead money with a flop bet. One of my mantras is 'don't go broke calling a big bet on the river with one or two pair.' Almost every time I do it, I go broke. From EP in any game, they are pretty much just a fold for me.

I mentioned this in the ed miller suitedness thread but assuming the book is the course, be sure to not gloss over the sections on loose multiway games. He covers when high card value begins to trump suitedness in games where flop spr tends to be lowish.


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I actually saw your post in that thread and you are correct. I just went back and re-read the first 120 pages (the part focusing on 1/2 & 1/3) and it seems I missed some important stack depth information. It was a lot to take in on my first read so I'm thinking about re-reading the entire book again.

Id be curious to see some examples of some standard spots you bluff in these multiway pots. My game is extremely bluff dependent, and I dont find many spots at all in 4+ way pots, so its certainly possible im losing value.

As far as multiway vs HU, even if these low PPs DO play better multiway, your range should be playing FAR better HU, as the top of your range play better HU, so your PFR should be higher to help these hand.

If you wanna play multiway, you can always limp, since initiatve basically doenst matter multiway, and youre basically playing for stacks so its better to get in cheaper since youre probably playing fit or fold.