I do agree that overall our IO of playing speculative hands (mainly playing just to hit them and then get paid off) has gone way down over the years. One of the biggest adjustments to my overall strategy has been to tighten way up in EP/MP with these types of hands because now I feel in order to be profitable they likey need (a) a cheap flop (one we can't guarantee in EP/MP) and (b) position (hand is way easier to play and get paid off postflop), unless the table is full of uber bad payoffy stationy terrible players. I actually think one of the big reasons I still win in my game is because I'm no longer playing the speculative hands that my opponents still are (not realizing their RIO on a lot of the hands they are playing are worse than their IO, plus ignoring the importance of position).

Regarding going multiway with TP type hands, I agree that we'd probably rather go up against a narrowed field than a multiway one. However, at most tables I play at it is super difficult to narrow the field, or know what will need to be done in order to narrow the field, especially in EP, especially by simply opening the pot ourselves. I've always thought the nut low preflop result is building a bloated very multiway pot with a handcuffing small SPR, and yet that is the result that will be most common by raising ourselves. Which is why I lean to limping in with thoughts of reraising, and meanwhile if that fails and I end up in a very multiway high SPR spot, while not the ideal outcome, it is still going to be a profitable one if we feel we can play ok poker postflop (especially with our disguised hand).

GimoG

Grunch

OP, you're vastly underestimating the value of when you have a hand that can make the nuts/relative nuts, being in a multiway pot increases the chance that someone else makes a strong second best hand that will pay you off.

Hands like suited broadways, suited Ax wheel hands, suited connectors, low-middle pairs are perfect for that type of approach.

Sure, maybe in some spots you might be able to win the pot more often if you get it HU with these holdings, but it doesn't offset being able to stack someone. Also, the reality is in LLSNL that it's really hard to isolate pre and get it HU going to the flop. People don't come to the casino to fold pre, and if they see a hand they like they're going to see a flop with it more often than not.

What are the two threads that are being referenced?

I skimmed most of the replies but read the OP and the thread title.

To answer the question "Is it ever good to be multiway?" the answer literally has to be yes. There's a really simple reason. If you believe it's never good for YOU to be multiway, then it must be good for someone. Who is that someone and why is it good for them?

This isn't obvious?

It means the players are just trading mistakes, off-setting each other's leaks, realizing equity, and paying rake.

Who is that good for?

CallMeVernon beat me to it but yeah, poker is an (almost) zero sum game. So the nuanced way to phrase it is, "Does playing multiway neutralize our advantage as good players?"

And my answer is that it neutralizes certain advantages (HUIP, bet-float, check-bet-fold lines that are super lucrative for us). It emphasizes certain other advantages (mostly hand selection and accurate hand valuation). Good players know how to adapt.

Cut my to;dr wall of text.

So you don't believe it is possible for other players to make mistakes that are so large that they offset the rake?

Here's my long winded set of examples.


If SPR's still fairly high and the flop action goes bet-call-raise to us on a 986 flop we can fold JJ. Our opponents might not. Or our opponents will play Q9s from EP and not know what to do in second position with five players on that flop. We didn't play that hand so we don't have to worry about it. Everyone's almost always playing 55 for a single raise so we don't win anything by hitting the same number of sets. Instead we win by extracting value from our sets (because we don't do make slowplays) and not having as many crappy starting hands turning into pairs and two pairs that have to pay off sets.

It's a bit like full ring versus shorthanded LHE or LO8. It turns one leak of bad players (playing too many hands) into an asset. But in return it punishes them brutally for other leaks (not value betting enough, not bluffing enough, maybe not calling down enough). Small winners who just grind the nuts are going to get slaughtered if they can't adapt.

So if we go to a limped flop 5ways with AA (or any other premium) it's not going to be profitable? (not arguing that other ways might be more profitable)

Gtoughgameifnot,imoG

I feel like something that is being completely overlooked here is position. It's poker 101, but I think a lot of people struggle to understand how much your ability to realize equity with hands like these changes when we are IP.


100bb eff: EP raise, MP call, we have 78hh OTB. Should be a no brainer VPIP. Whether you want to 3b or flat is another discussion IMO but should be a 100% VPIP.


Change our position to the SB, or change our position to immediately next to act after the UTG raiser and our decision should be very different (aka 100% 3b or fold IMO).


Our ability to act last postflop makes a massive difference in realizing equity for speculative hands in these scenarios. We see way more rivers and are given a better position to bluff when other players have missed the flop.

I don't get what you're asking.

The question I responded to asked who benefited from a game dynamic where pots go multi-way, people play passively, hands often go to showdown, and everyone realizes their equity.

The answer to that...is the house. In that game, in the long run, all the players will break even minus rake.

Hand selection could mitigate that somewhat. In other words, if you're usually the guy playing the hand with teh most equity, and realizing that equity, then you'll probably do a little better than most. I don't know if this is enough to beat rake or not, but it's definitely not a recipe for crushing the game.

But even if you're playing only good hands, ifyour opponents are playing the same range, then you'll still just break even minus rake. Yes you'll make money with AA. But you'll give it back when the other guy has AA, etc.

To make money like this, you would have to be sure that your opponents will play each hand with a range that, on-average, has less equity than yours.

That's really hard to do when you're against 3-5 people. It's unlikely you'll always be the favorite.

It's also really hard to do in the types of situations that inspired this thread....calling out of position. Someone else raised, and we called.....how can we be an equity favorite with 98s??

We won't be. Ever.

And if we're not an equity favorite, then simple passive play where we just realize our equity will not make money.

To profit with a speculative hand...you need to OVER-REALIZE your equity. There are only two ways to do that. 1) Extreme value, and that really requires massive implied odds and stacks generally >200BB's. or 2) Leverage fold equity. That means narrow fields, aggressive betting, and winning with unmade hands without showdown. In other words, the opposite of a passive multi-way situation.

You're totally missing a large amount of the point that others have already brought up above: in that, on top of our superior hand selection as well as our more mindfulness of position, we also play better (hopefully?) than our opponents postflop. Mike's "cooler" thread is a pretty good example of that.

Although I'll totally agree that our advantage over our typical opponent isn't nearly what it once was, but this doesn't mean seeing a limped pot with a bunch of others won't be able to outrun the rake (nor does it mean we can't do better by doing something else).

GcluelessNLnoobG

No offense, OP, but do you ever play in a loose-passive 1/2 or 1/3NL game?

Your discussion about "just trading mistakes, off-setting each other's leaks, realizing equity, and paying rake" sounds like a limit game. In a NL game that is similarly low on FE, we can still make a ton because 1) We can bet-size; 2) We can fold after getting a piece if the situation warrants it; and 3) Many of our Vs are bad at both.

Yes, Vs aren't getting stacks in as lightly as they used to, on average, but they still call a couple of streets with some miserable hands, and they are still awful at bet-sizing (if they bet at all), thus often offering us good Expressed Odds to draw that don't even count on IOs.

Like everything in poker, it depends and more than one variable matters.

You're way oversimplifying this to make your point.

For example, "everyone realizes their equity" is a fancy way of saying everyone plays equally well postflop. Yes, if everyone plays roughly equally well then it's hard to beat the rake.

But that's not true. Some people pay off big hands when they shouldn't. Some people get bluffed out when they shouldn't. (This happens in multiway pots, albeit less than HU.) Some people waste value through poor bet sizing or ridiculous slowplays. Those players don't "realizes their equity" to the extent we do. Therefore we have a postflop advantage.

No, it's not. But it sets up profitable postflop situations where we don't have as many marginal hands in our range as they do which supports us playing better postflop.

Yes. If we play more or less like our opponents it will be hard to beat the rake.

I'm confident they will. This is the live small stakes forum, not the online $25/50 forum.

You no doubt realize that if QQ has, say, 37% five ways that this is an absolutely crushing hot and cold advantage. QQ will make up much more of our EP range than it makes up of their range. (IP we'll play a lot looser because, even multiway, we'll have both position and skill advantages.)

In a loose game it's probably a bad idea to call raises with small SCs OOP. 98s might be borderline, but unless stacks are huge and opponents are terribly loose, we'll need to win some pots through aggression. That's harder to do OOP, but not impossible in small doses.

People find inspiration from all kinds of sources, and apparently yours is in people overrating hands OOP. Fine. But the sentence:


'There is no such thing as a hand that "plays well" in, or enjoys playing, multi-way pots.'


doesn't mention position.


(By the way, I'm opening 98s in EP for a raise, leading to fewer multiway pots. But if I open and get 5 way action then yes, I'll want to sometimes outplay them. If this 5 way pot happens routinely then I'll probably tighten my opening range a bit, although 98s probably barely makes the cut.)

Yes. Most of our opponents play passively. They play 98s from all over the place, dreaming of that time they make a straight and stack two pair or a straight flush and stack quads or a flush and get paid off or who knows what.

They play poorly. If we mimic them and play poorly, we will at best lose to the rake. So instead we participate in forums like this to try to improve.

As I said, I do like theoretical threads and am glad you posted this. But are you really investing all this time in this thread just to argue that "If we play the same as our opponents we'll lose to the rake"? That's hardly news.

(If you're just trolling for pedagogical purposes then hats off to you.)

There are some games where the OMC-style is the right idea.

Wait eight hours to win three (if you are lucky) 200bb pots.

That's 600 bb.

Dribble back 150 bb while paying the blinds, unsuccessfully set-mining, missing nut flush draws, and missing flops.

450 bb net in 8 hours is still 56 bb/hr.

If you don't like those numbers, put it your own.

Even only three smaller 150 bb pots is 450 bb in.

Dribble back 150 bb's and the net is 300 bb in 8 hours, 37 bb/hr.

Give back 100 bb on a cooler and it is still 200 bb in 8 hours, 25 bb/hr.

Is it fun?

No.

Is it poker?

Barely.

Can you run bad and win bigger zero pots over an 8-hour session?

Of course.

But it only work in MULTI WAY environments, without that there are no big pots and better players just get out of the way.

The thinking player has to adapt, avoid, or will wind up playing bad for the specific conditions at the moment.

I think that you and the others are missing a large amount of my point, which is weird because you pretty much state my point explicitly in the bolded. Yet grasping it and implementing it seems to elude most of this thread.

I'm really not missing the point that's being made about how skilled post-flop play can generate +EV even in multi-way situations. I'm not denying that. Though I do believe emphatically that most such situations are marginal at best. And, as you've eloquently put it, we could be in better situations.

So I see your point. Now I'm challenging you (collective "you", not just GG), to follow your point through to it's logical conclusion.

Yes, fine, we can use a skill advantage to enhance our winnings when we spike a big hand.

Q: When can we do that?
A: When the amount potential money that can be won is high

Q: Be more specific, how does your skill advantage allow you to make more of that money
A: By making better decisions than our opponents.

Ok, so let's stop there for a minute and unpack that. We make better decisions than our opponents. That's what leads to profitability right? Ok, so if a certain hand required more decisions....then your advantage would be even larger. Following me now? I'll repeat that. More decisions = More +EV.

It also helps if we make our opponent's decisions harder. That makes them more likely to make a bad decision. Easy decisions come when stacks are committed, hands are made, and odds are easy to calculate. Harder decisions come when future betting is uncertain and more complex.

See where I'm going with this?? We gotta be DEEEEEEEP. Our skill advantage is worthless if our villains aren't required to think street-by-street, and find themselves in simple situations more often than not.

If you want to leverage a skill advantage, then you have to force your villains to make as many decisions as possible. And you need to make every decision complex and uncertain increasing the likelihood of making a mistake.

A simple tool for evaluating how well you'll be able to force multiple complex decisions on your opponent, is the SPR. And really, that's just a fancy way to read stack-size. The point is....for our skill advantage to be useful....we need lots of money behind.

And now we get to my point.....if you're playing a hand deep stacked.....why are you playing it multi-way??? ****ing raise dude!!

Look, I get it. It's not a perfect world. Sometimes you raise AQs from up front and somehow get 5 callers. F'ing variance. But if that happens to you three times in two hours....you're doing something wrong.

It's easy to just say "I shoulda known these fish would all call. they're all dumb" and then curse them for not giving you 'respect'. But my advice to anyone still reading this is that you fight off that thinking and think critically about your own play. It's actually not that hard. The answer is generally "raise more pre". Sometimes the answer is "maybe limp/rr isn't just for aces" But I digress....

So the logic goes like this....
Multi-way hands are good when we have holdings that flop-well and we have sufficiently deep stacks. --------> But if we have sufficiently deep stacks, we should raise larger, or 3-bet to generate a narrower field -------> But if we're not deep enough to do that, then we're not deep enough to leverage any kind of skill advantage.

It's two limps to Hero im MP. He has 87s and over-limps with a stack of 100BB's. The next player raises to 5BB's. HJ calls, BB Calls, one limper calls. There is 21.5BB's in the pot, and its 4BB's to call.

Your skill advantage is worthless here.

The SPR is going to be 4. Money is going in soon. Very few decisions are going to be made post-flop. It's difficult for your opponents to make a mistake. Bluffing will be extremely difficult because of the SPR and number of players. There's just nothing good about this situation, but I know that 3/4 of the posters here read that hand and think "ZOMG, 5 to 1 pot oddz baby! And we're closing the god damn action!! "

So this is my point. I don't think the above is a profitable situation. I don't think that's a situation to showcase our post flop talents. I don't think that the average 1/2 fish is going to make a catastrophic mistake in that hand.

So I'm not calling the raise.

So again....the logic here goes like this....

We want to play hands where we can leverage our skill advantage to win bigger pots. We win the biggest pots when we're deep stacked. if we're deep stacked, the most +EV line is aggression. If we're not deep enough to be aggressive, then we're not deep enough to leverage our skill advantage.

Without our skills we are powerless. Such status forces us to fall into a loose-passive shell that is nearly identical to what everyone else is doing. Hence we are just trading mistakes with our opponents, and paying rake.

All the time dude.

Do you ever find yourself waiting for the dealer to spread the flop, looked around at the table, saw five other players with cards in their hands and thought "damn, this is such a good spot!"

All the time. OOP I have a much stronger range than them and am getting paid off with a premium hand at low SPR. IP I still have a decent range, position, and can occasionally get them to make big mistakes in big pots.

You're making some valid points about multiway pots suppressing certain skill advantages and enhancing others, but you're way overplaying your hand ITT.

So you're saying that I'm right, but not as right as I think I am.

Ok....

Now tell me EXACTLY how over-right you think I am.

At what stack depth are you comfortable multi-way? with what kinds of hands?

And when you arrive at your answer, the next question is...

At that stack depth, could we have reasonably played differently so as to put ourselves in a higher +EV situation? Is that higher +EV situation a multi-way pot?

And the answers to all of those questions are "it depends." They are unanswerable without a lot of other info. It's not just stack depth or hands. It's mostly Villain profiles.

Yes. Often. It usually happens when the pot was raised pre (either by me or by an OMC especially) and I'm holding a pair, or QJs or some such. I didn't expect to get called in 5 spots but if people like their hand they want to see a flop. So here we are and I have (for example) 88 and I'm sitting there thinking "AJ8, please!"

Or perhaps I called OTB with 89s (your favorite, I believe) and flop gives me a combo draw. If the OMC has TP/overpair he'll likely bet enough to get everyone out between us but fold to my raise. If he doesn't it will often check to me and I can semi-bluff or take the free card, depending on who's in, stack sizes, etc.

Your question was "is it ever good?" and clearly sometimes it is. Is it always good? Clearly not. So much depends on stack sizes, what size raise it takes to thin the field, how elastic calling ranges are to bet-size (hint: often not very).

I will say that in the last two sessions I have stacked someone with a meh starting hand in a multi-way raised pot with effective stacks in the 125BB range though. Those two hands made over 60% of my profit over the two sessions. We can likely take that down to about 50% because of all effect of all the multi-way pots where I didn't continue post-flop, but that is still massively profitable.

It just depends. "X is always bad" statements are almost never accurate.

Whether multiway or heads up, I always prefer to be in position. I’m not a big fan of calling a raise from the big blind with small pairs and SCs, even if multi if I know I’m gonna get blown off my hand on the flop. However, if table dynamics are such that the players are not very aggressive post flop, I may call. In position is another story. Also, the preflop raiser is important to me as well. Is he a fish that I can stack when I hit my hand? I’m in. Is he a player who plays multi way pots badly and I have position? Count me in. If I’m in EP and I’m the preflop raiser, I tread carefully post flop depending on how hard I hit it.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/upswing...ing-leaks/amp/

This article is pretty good.

Fuggin brilliant!

If you argument is that the best idea is to play deep over multiple streets in order to maximize the chances of our villains making mistakes (and that's not a bad argument), then a multiway limped pot is *exactly* the situation you want. The multiwayness of it allows you to hopefully run into one idiot who is willing to continue over multiple streets lol badly, while the limpedness of it guarantees a high SPR (one that favours skill over multiple streets).

But this also seems to contradict your statement regarding everyone playing the same as everyone else in these spots (and as others have stated above, yes, it will be very difficult if not impossible to beat the rake if this is in fact the case).

To be honest, I'm actually little more on board with OP than others because I sometimes question the difference in postflop skill level between myself and my opponents. This is why I've actually slowly moved to an even tighter-is-righter approach plus dropped a lot of hands that at one time I thought were profitable multiway but now no longer do (especially OOP).

GcluelessNLnoobG

Here's my $.02.

In the games that I play in it is very difficult (nigh impossible) to find a pre-flop raise sizing that will go heads up following a bunch of limpers. Say I open to $20-$25 in EP ($2/5 NL) I will commonly get anywhere from 1 - 2 callers.

However, if I'm in LP and there are 4-5 limps in front of me, and I raise to $40; it will almost always go all folds, or all calls. A great deal depends on whether or not the first limper will call. If he does then it becomes exponentially more likely that all others will call too. So playing poker in this 'heads up' world, appears to be something that is mostly out of our control.

Now, I'm not saying that preflop aggression isn't good, I am just saying that we need to embrace multi-way pots as well. This has been debated many times already in the forum and is nothing new. Players pre flop calling ranges are fairly inelastic to bet sizing. I just am not convinced that it is more profitable to go head's up to a raise, than it is to go 5 ways to a large preflop raise when we have a significant range advantage.

There is undoubtedly more variance associated with multi-way pots, and we need to have stronger hands relatively in order to win at showdown. Which is why the larger SC's (KQ, QJ, J10) go WAY up in value because they often can also win a multi way pot with one pair, as well as making nut straights and better flushes.

Frankly, I would much rather go 9-ways to a flop (with a healthy raise pre) with larger SC's than see a flop heads up. I'll win less pots, but more $$'s.

What does that even mean? Multiway pots dampen some of our advantages as (aspiring) skillful players and enhance other advantages.

Overplaying your metaphorical hand means

• you're taking a point with some validity (that multiway pots dampen some of our advantages)
• and stretching it to ridiculous hyperbole (we can't beat the rake)
• by eliding away important details (5-way pots mean opponents are making big preflop mistakes; they'll make more postflop mistakes because of their weaker ranges; we can still use position if SPR is still fairly high and people play straightforwardly on the flop).

Against typical live $1-3 opponents, all of them.

My hand selection is going to change on the margins depending on the characteristics of the game and the action in the hand as already discussed at length above.

Often it is. If people are wrongly calling raises preflop with weak ranges, that's generating value for us because it's a mistake we don't make. We give up the ability to induce certain kinds of postflop mistakes at certain frequencies, and gain the ability to induce different kinds of mistakes. But when the SPR gets low, our superior preflop range has already made us a lot of money. We don't need to be able to outplay our (now numerous) opponents on as many occasions because they've already made a lot of preflop mistakes.