This +1.

Beating 1/3 is as simple as this. Be better preflop and don't absolutely suck post.

Transitioning to 2/5 requires a little more skill, IMO. Winning at 2/5 requires significantly better post flop skills, as pre flop our opponents aren't hurk durk calling a 8x raise with 96o as often any more.

That's most of my argument. Add aggression

Except for the aggression

Define "badly". I say our opponents are going to make FAR FAR FAR less calling mistakes than they will checking mistakes. And FAR FAR FAR less folding mistakes than betting mistakes. Here's that A-word again.

I get what you're saying man. And to be fair, I never specified limped pots. If there's a hand where we're getting attractive pot odds, with a speculative hand, in a limped pot, with triple-digit implied odds....then sure. Limp it up. But only if you have a really compelling reason for not raising or folding.

There are advantages and disadvantages there though. We could start a whole tangent thread on the dynamics of limped pots. Max value means you need an opponent to go from making a minimal investment in the pot, to a maximum investment. Hands that don't make the nuts go down in value. Hands like A6s, which you might fold most of the time, go up in value.

I'm not really going to argue that a multi-way limped pot is a bad situation if we're exercising good hand selection and truly possess a post flop skill advantage. Position helps, but with triple digit implied odds....we're really trying to make the nuts which play fine from anywhere.

So if we're talking specifically about limping multi-way, I could get behind it some of the time. But I'd be asking you to make a really really compelling case for not raising or folding. And I gotta say, the stuff I hear like "pot odds", and "closing the action", and "hand plays well multi way" is *not* compelling.

One final thought on limping though. How often are you *actually* in a high-SPR situation? Imagine a 5 way limped pot. 5BB's in the middle. You're 100BB's deep so the SPR is 20. Plenty high. But now imagine that two of those limpers are only 40BB's effective. Now your SPR is 8.

Who's most likely to become committed in this hand?

Whose stack is best suited to an aggressive all-in move denying us a fair amount of equity realization??

I don't think alot of people are considering all possibilities in multi-SPR pots. I see alot of folks laser-focused on the most desirable outcome, and then proving that it's possible without ever really evaluating how likely it is to happen.

Based on OP's other postings I'm not sure he is playing in "typical" LLSNL games where villains generally are too passive and too loose. He seems to want to make all decisions based on post flop SPR rather than equities, pot odds, position, etc.

People keep repeating this word salad. I wish I understood the thinking of it.

"weaker ranges" - Dude I see five threads a day on this forum where people are using the phrase "plays well multi-way" to describe hands 9-high. I actually doubt that most people have a range advantage here because they use the multiway/implied odds excuse to play trash. That's how fish think!! You can mock your opponents for playing J4, but it has more equity than 89! So where is your range advantage coming from??

"play straightforwardly" - This is a massive contradiction! If the claim is that we can use our range advantage and skill advantage to win more....then doesn't that imply that our profit comes from opponents making mistakes? And if they're playing "straightforwardly", are they making mistakes?

You sure about that? Are you calling raises out of the blinds with 97s because you're getting 4 to 1 and closing the action? If so I'd say you're making at least as many mistakes as your opponents.

GRRRRR, this is frustrating. How is your range superior? The hands that inspired this thread were never better than Ten-high. Every single one of the ****ty broadway combos and rag aces that you mock your opponents for playing have a distinct edge against Ten-high.

if you have something better than ten-high...say...a good hand.....then you should be playing it with narrow fields and low SPRs.....NOT in situations where you're multi-way with implied odds.

if you're good....then you should mostly be stuck in this multi-way situations with your worst playable hands. Whereas loose passives can limp and flat with hands as high as JJ/AK. If you're claiming to have a range advantage in these spots....I don't know what to tell you.

Maybe you should post in threads about "the hands that inspired" this one rather than drawing sweeping generalizations. It's a bizarre debating tactic ("Such and such said he calls 1/10 stack oop with 97s so therefore everyone does and so therefore you can't beat the games if pots are multiway") and has reached the point where going on like this is useless.

Take it up with the folks playing 97s in the wrong spots rather than ruining your own once-promising thread.

Just because I've used some examples doesn't mean that I've not articulated the broader concept that I'm trying to discuss. If you're not seeing it, then you're not thinking about the game correctly.

Falling back on "it depends" is a cop out.

Tell ya what....why don't YOU give me some examples of how a range advantage gets leveraged into profit in a multi-way pot. You don't even have to use real examples like I did. You can make up any line of action best suits your argument.

There may be some truth to this. I generally play in rooms where 2/5 only runs about once or twice a week, and the biggest game in town is usually 1/2. Generally a low stakes game will play tougher if it's the biggest game in the room.

I think SPR is immensely powerful for planning a hand. Planning a hand is immensely successful at generating profit.

All that other stuff is what you think about when you don't have a plan.

Out-foxed myself here. I meant to say *more* in both cases, not less.

Owl-

Just out of curiosity...how old are you and how long have you been playing?

Shorn

Definitely with you on the games toughness level. I think that SPR's usefulness is inversely proportional to the number of players in the hand. With varying stack depths of a multi way pot, you will often have wildly different SPR's. Especially in a loose passive game where short stacks will limp/call 15% of their stack and still play totally passive post.

If you want to make SPR a foundational tool, go ahead. But I think that its better as a heads up tool. Especially if you intend to use it to go into button clicking mode (flop SPR of 2.2 so I can bet 3/4 pot on flop and auto stack off when the flush hits turn and it's still not profitable for Villain).

38 and 12 years. Though I really only count the last 4 or 5. Before that cash games weren't legal here and it was all low buy in/high rake donkaments. I was a rec/reg in those games until I got divorced. After that I started making longer trips to out of state casinos and learning cash games. About 4-5 years ago cash games became legal where I live, and now I play 5-20 hours a week.

You're cherry picking marginal hands, and debatably also cherry picking poor preflop decisions, to draw sweeping generalizations about ranges. If 97s is the very worst hand in our range, but to our opponent it's just another no-brainer limp/call along with 97o or 96s or 53s, then yes, we have the stronger range. That's stronger in both hot and cold equity and in the quality of postflop play it induces. However, I'm not generally playing 97s like that in EP and I doubt I'm alone among readers of this thread. (I have no idea if these people in the other "inspirational" threads played well or poorly. Perhaps you should recap the hands since you think they're salient to your point and we can discuss why they are or aren't representative.)

Since you can't or won't see the difference between cherry picking and broad generalities, this thread is no longer adding incremental pedagogical value for me. Others can judge for themselves.

I mean, if your thesis is really, "Many people tend to play marginal hands like suited semiconnectors too optimistically, claiming IMPLIED ODDS! that they don't really have," that's a reasonable argument to make from the data.

Or if your thesis is, "Many somewhat competent players fall into habits of playing like their less-competent neighbors and forget where their edge comes from," that's more sweeping and hence requires more evidence (or remains speculative), but I probably agree. It's certainly an interesting discussion.

My read is you're too stubborn to admit you're really arguing one of those two, so you're making broad generalizations from those two points to absurd exaggerations like the impossibility of beating the rake multiway. And to further your generalizations you're embedding assumptions about passive postflop play, cherry picking marginal examples, etc.

To top it off, you deploy the haughty tone of a know-it-all. I get more out of this forum when I take the attitude that we're all here to learn, even from different starting levels. But I can accept learning from know-it-alls who actually contribute information instead of relying on cheap rhetorical tricks to support their overgeneralizations and hyperbole.

[citation needed] I mean for some of them, yes, but that's a way too eide and unsupported generalization
Bull****. If you can't see that more things matter than SPR, you are the one not thinking about the game correctly. Sure, SPR matters, but as a well known coach once said "SPR is not Ed Miller's permission to turn off your brain. Stop playing single street poker, imo.

OK. Here is a real example from Monday night.

5-handed 1/3 game at about 1130, when game shuts down at midnight. Effective stacks range from about $200-$495. One V covers Hero.

One limper to Hero OTB, who raises to $15 with Q9s. 4 calls.

Pot $60
Flop Qs9s7x (not Hero's suit)
Checks to hero who bets (I don't recall exact sizing, $40-50). SB (covers) folds.
V CRAI for $315ish from BB. Folds to Hero.

V has been liberally 3-betting Hero's opens and showing down hands as weak as AJ and 66 9as well as better hands, of course). He has zero combos of QQ in his range here, very rarely has 99, and even 77 is discounted. Since he didn't 3-bet pre, his range is dominated by semi-bluffs (combo-draws, pair+draw) with a few combos of value and a maybe a few of FOS. Of those value hands, only like 6 combos beat us and a few chop, so Hero calls.

V shows 97s. He probably would not have called had SB not called first, giving him what he thought were good IOs. That multi-way pot made me a ton that I would likely not have had a shot at if it weren't multi-way, and my range (and position) advantage made it possible.

It's really not too eide (if you insist on using that word). There are hands, and then there are their most likely post-flop results. If the hand you're most likely to make is one-pair/good kicker, that obviously benefits from low SPR. And that's a truth universal enough to speak about in generalities.

Oh puh-leeeeze buddy. Don't mistake my glibness for stupidity. Priority 1 is to make a plan for the hand. I don't think that's debatable. It's really not that hard to look at your hand, determine it's most likely post-flop situations, and evaluate your ability to extract value from it. SPR does that for us.

But SPR is a spectrum. It's not enough to say Hand X is good at SPR Y. We might adjust Y based on things like position, and other table dynamics.

HOLY **** GARICK!! THANK YOU FOR PROVING MY POINT!

This hand is a great illustration of what I'm talking about...

Ok, I'm not gonna break down the hand, but you didn't make a ton *because* it was multi-way. I doubt very much that a five way pot was your goal when you raised. I'll bet anything that if that situation came up 3 orbits later, you would have raised to $25 hoping to narrow the field.

you flopped the friggen joint man. Congrats. That happens...almost never. Most of the time you're going to have to *work* to make money with this hand. I'm quite sure you're not going to tell me that you're happy to raise small and play fit or fold against 4 knuckleheads. I seriously won't believe that you believe that's the optimal, most +EV line.

But just in case you do, then I think it's fair to say that this hand would have played out exactly the same way had the cards been reversed. Are you folding 97s on the button against 1 limper? So I wouldn't be pounding my chest about this hand. Variance happened to put you on the winning side of it this time. But are you sure you're making a profit long term?

Now here's why your hand illustrates my point.

If the villain in the hand had posted his hand in the forums, I would have posted "fold pre". And then I would have been absolutely excoriated for three pages with admonitions of "but 4 to 1", and "nearly closing the action", and "BTN will be raising wide and we have skillz" and the classic "But this hand plays well multi-way"

THAT'S my point.

You just clearly stated that you made money because the villain made a bad decision with a bad hand pre-flop.

Did the villain make a bad decision?

If so, then we please tell me why there wasn't a unanimous outcry of "FOLD PRE" in these two threads:

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...izing-1716967/

https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...9s-bb-1716480/

EEEEE-F@$#K&*ING-XACTLY!!!

Yet for some reason I've been mobbed by people trying to tell me that Villain's thinking is completely reasonable (and profitable, lol)

You do realize that Garrick's hand and the other thread have nothing in common? DUCY?


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Villain calling a LP raise with suited 9-high.......that doesn't sound familiar to you at all?

Villain calling 2.5 BB more closing action vs villain calling 4BB more with suited one tapper and others still to act is not the same

Are you really this obtuse?


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Hair splitting

The raise is a little bigger, stacks are a little bigger, and there's one limper left to act. I'm really not having this debate with you. If you believe that situation is in a different universe, fine, your opinion is duly noted. Good bye

And it also illustrates my point, that position and V matter as much as multi-way vs not.

No, I wouldn't argue that V made a reasonable call because 1) he was OOP, 2) he wasn't closing the action, and 3) his skills post-flop were not up to playing the hand well.

On the other hand, though I didn't plan on getting 3 callers and didn't particularly want it, I was able to adjust. My "plan" for that hand was to get one caller and TID with a c-bet. However, once I got a million callers, my plan changed to "flop something good, end up with the bluffable guy whom I could float betting flop, or fold." Having only one plan based on what is most likely is weak sauce. You need to have a plan for how you will handle various scenerios.

This has turned {mod edit} from interesting to not so much


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That is not what you said though. You said "a hand better than 10-high." JTs, for example, does not want a HU pot with a low SPR in many game circumstances.

That's not the point. The point is that there are almost no situations where being multi-way is optimal. (set mining being the one exception I can think of). And in those situations, It's worth asking "could I have done something to not be multi-way", and the answer is almost always "yes, I could have raised (or raised larger)". If that doesn't sound like a viable option, then you're probably not very deep stacked. And if that's the case, you probably don't have the implied odds that you think you do in order to justify playing the hand at all. That logic keeps going around and around in circles. There are two ways to break out of it. 3-bet or fold

Ok on #1. Position matters. I'm not sure why you think that I don't think it does. As far as closing the action goes.....that's such a flimsy justification for anything. Be honest now, how many limp/rr do you actually see in this game? I feel like I could watch a table for a whole day and only see it a handful of times.

If you're citing that as a justification, then you're implying that you would play tighter if you weren't closing the action. Is that *really* true? If you were the villain, would you have folded hands here that you would have called with without the limper in between?

OR.....are you more likely to think "There's almost no chance that guy raises, and if he calls, my pot odds are just gonna be better". That kind of thinking leads to a widening of ranges. So I'm just not convinced that "closing the action" means anything good.

As far as skills go. No one ever said "I'm not good enough to play this hand from here". So citing skill seems flimsy as well. If you're going to say that you have skills, fine, name them. Define them explicitly and explain in what situations they might be useful. Once you've done that you can measure your ability to use them given stack sizes and SPR. And then you can define, in dollars, the expectation of a given line of play.

I've done that extensively in the two threads linked. There's no profit, and skill won't help you. Skill can't beat math.

Calm down there Hellmuth....it's pretty easy to adjust when you flop top-two on a wet board, block all the sets, and then have villain just hand you his money on a silver platter while you were making the exact same play you'd make on auto-pilot.

Way to think on your feet champ.

El oh friggen el

Yeah....way to execute.

Dude, calm the **** down.

I'm not saying that I played that hand magnificently. I'm saying that poker is a dynamic game and in that exact circumstance the pot being multi-way was advantageous to me. You challenged for an example and I provided one. In no way did I say that is was the most likely outcome or that it required mystical skills.

Further, since LLSNL Vs' calling ranges tend to be rather inelastic to bet-sizing, just "choosing a size that gets one caller" is not even close to reliable. For more on this topic, please read the Best of LLSNL thread on 1/2 PF raise sizing.

Additionally, the overlimping question comes down to table dynamics and SPRs. At some tables it is better to raise your 89s OTB, thin the field and gain initiative. On others all you are doing is creating a hand that is just as multi-way, but now has a low SPR that is not at all advantageous for a speculative hand.

Finally, stop making declarative statements devoid of math and then challenging people to prove you wrong with math.