It’s 6-12

People
Don’t fold

DougL and I disagreed on this one.

Bellagio 20:

I open UTG, Doug 3! next-in, TAG 4! in CO, blinds fold. Do I have a capping range here (5 bets in Vegas) or do I call everything? I'm curious what the solvers do.

I would never cap in that spot. But I think it could be argued that you should either cap quite a few hands or never cap because ranges like AA-JJ/AKs are too transparent.

Cephus doesn't cap much preflop.

http://poker.srv.ualberta.ca/preflop

I’m curious about the solvers too. I call my whole range here. I think capping in this spot really telegraphs your hand and it’s not multiway enough that you need to squeeze that value out preflop. Deception aside, I don’t think capping AK or JJ would be correct here anyway, so that really narrows your range down if you do cap. Then your astute opponents can play basically perfect poker against you after the flop. Maybe not perfect, but they will have an informational edge. If you call everything, your range is still as wide as anything you’d ever open UTG.

FWIW, the cold 4 betting TAG was the one other decent player at the table. Captain R and I disagreed after about how decent, but I think we agreed he had some game. Neither of us think he has to have KK+. I think he's capable of hand reading, if that changes anyone's response. Neither Captain R or I have much experience with 5 bet caps.

The 40 games at the time were meh, and the 80 games were terrible, so it is possible that the villain played higher, but was game selecting. Captain R certainly was.

Y'all noticed that it's a 3-way pot right? Head-up solvers are no help, until we can fold out one of the villains.

If the third party in the pot were a fish I would be more inclined to cap, because getting value from them is worth more than the cost of revealing the strength of our hand.

(If we do cap, the difference between our four-bet calling range and our five-betting range is likely to be small anyway. Maybe we're calling QQ instead of capping.)

Capping here against a good player is bad. It turns our hand face up.
Unless we are going to 5 bet cap with a huge range. Which also seems bad.

It might be a bit strong to say they are "no" help. But yes, I did recognize it was 3-ways.

It depends on the fish. If capping shuts them down, I'd rather call.

I think that capping only strong hands is bad. You still have to play postflop poker against two players where the weaker one is at least moderately decent.

I’ve never worked with solvers but I’m interested in them. If they only deal with heads up pots that’s new information to me.

Was doing some research today. Pio and Monker work multiway, multistreet. I see most NL pros using Pio, not sure what’s best for LHE.

A slightly related question is: if you call, does/should Doug have a capping range here? Does it make any difference being "last to act" here?

I think you should call everything; not sure about Doug.

With the cold 4 bettor having position, I don't have a 5 betting range. I'm willing to believe that players better than me do, but I'm not slicing up my range oop.

There is some magic numbers of players in the pot where this becomes irrelevant and you cap to make everyone else pay an extra bet

With 3 ppl total I’d rather call and check raise 100%


With 4+ total players. I cap.

If you can make it look like it's a 'what the heck, might as well cap it' play I'd do that w/ AA and KK.

The fact that every other player in the pot is thinking about poker has to matter. Hiding information has value. Guess you don't get in a lot of 6 way pots with thinking players

If you're going to cap anything, I'd choose KK, AA, and some lowish suited connectors (if you have them in your opening range in the first place) like 67s.

But I'd rather just cap nothing.

On one side of the equation, this is true. More players = more preflop value foregone if you opt for deception.

On the other side, more players should make the value of the deception less because the pot will be more "protected," right? The best of your opponents' hands will be stronger and stronger (including draws) and will get harder to bluff out; conversely, they're less likely to steal (reasoning you can't have hit a flop) because someone else might have hit it.

So both sides of the equation call for more straightforward play preflop at that "magic number." I suspect it's sometimes 3 and sometimes 4 depending on reads, but that in any case, playing too straightforward in a 3-way pot can't be as big leak if it's marginal in this situation.

I would just call with 3 players in

Yeah I think if we never cap here, we'd be doing it close to correct.

BTW am I crazy to think that "observant opponents will steal if you missed a flop" (paraphrasing Sklansky and Malmuth from memory) is somewhat overrated? If you raise and your opponent routinely tries to get you to fold unpaired big cards because the flop has small cards, then shouldn't you call down with more ace-high hands and/or open and call down more pocket pairs?

I see value in some preflop semibluffing, esp. HU or 3h, but some of the lines in this thread, like semibluffing 97s in a multiway pot, seem pointless given the number of players in to keep each other honest.

I would never semibluff with 97s in a 3 bet mw pot. The chances of getting everyon to fold after I cap is not very good.

I wouldn’t cap, but I think if you either cap or don’t with 100 percent of your range, then it is fine

So I thought we should cap at least some of the time, because:

1. Doug is in the middle and the next strongest range is on the button. With our strongest hands, we are going to extract the most value when the weakest hand is in the middle with the two strongest hands first and last to act. I.e. we cap AA and get to bet(/3?) the flop. Alternatively, what are we doing, k/r'ing good flops? I'm not sure this really extracts more value. I think it's different than if the strongest range is in the middle (not sure how this is possible) and the weakest is in LP.

2. Since it's 3-ways, and everyone behind us has strong ranges, it's not like whether our opponents specifically know our exact range (let's say we cap QQ+/AKs and call everything else) matters that much, since they don't know each other's ranges. In other words, we are basically protected when we have a weak range by the other two who have to play against each other's ranges also. I.e., not like we're going to get bluffed out when we have TT on an A-9-5 flop like we would if we were HU, because the combination of our range and the 3rd person's hands are going to cover pretty much the whole range of hands the other player has to consider. Sort of hand range coverage collusion. Information is still hidden between the other two players.

Now if we only cap KK+ and not AKs, then this does not work at all. I'm sure it's imperative un-paired hands are in our capping range.

Anyways, just some thoughts, I could still be totally wrong on the validity/value of these statements.

I imagine it is GTO to cap some percentage, given that I’m
Not a computer and this situation comes up so infrequently, a 100/0 strategy seems better to me. Q donjuan

How sensible is it to talk about GTO in a multiway pot?