this is interesting and informative.

Lol of course it matters. The more people in the pot the stronger the average hand is.

It’s fine if you don’t understand this concept, refer to Sol Reader to get some more insight.

Their range is top ~50% of hands, minus JJ+/AK. Stacks are too short. SPR is too low. You will get called by worse. There are very few turn cards that are good for our hand. Just jam the flop. You'd be surprised by what people will call with, but won't bet.

1) It is much more likely you will get called with better and be nearly drawing dead or best case scenario you are flipping.

2) Having very few good turn or river cards is shifting the focus on playing your exact hand and not your range. Protection is not important in 4 way pots, especially when flop calling ranges are strong on this flop.

3) I think people are getting confused here because of absolute value strength vs relative strength. You guys realize we are in the middle of our range here? Do yourself a favor and type out all the hands you would rather have on this board other than KK no spade and you will realize how low in our hand distribution we actually are.

Literally even saying "they can have anything" is "ranging" your opponent. Your goal is simply to get as close and accurate as you can to better inform your decision. Just because it's very unclear doesn't mean you shouldn't try. See, stuff like this is what separates the wheat from the chaff.

Yeah, like, do people here think our hand is "better" than if we had KQ with a spade?

Sols concept makes perfect sense if we are deeper. I would check this flop just about every time if we were all deeper but with this stack size checking and giving all these guys a free card makes very little sense.

+1

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I doubt we'll find an agreement, but my point is more general; clearly you're saying that in certain situations it makes sense for us to consider things other than jamming. What I'm suggesting then is for you to start looking a bit closer to find out where that breakpoint is, because I think you're just kind of guessing and assuming that this is clearly just jam territory.

Like we can all agree that if we're 10 SPR this is clearly never a jam, and if we're .1 SPR, this is always a jam, so why don't we start from there. Where do you think the breakpoints are, and what is your evidence for it?

After having done a bunch of work, I have found that the break point is actually much lower than most people think.

That said I think because the opponent's ranges are much wider in live, I think jamming or betting actually is more reasonable than DooDooPoker suggests, where checking is almost certainly the correct play in a more GTO environment.

Even so, how much looser are the opponents and how does that affect our strategy most certainly IS a range discussion, and one that requires active analysis, and acting like it's a no brainer is not how you get better at poker.

Saying ranges don't matter makes no sense to me, because in order for you to justify jamming in this point, the best way you can do it is literally by using ranges. You do it by saying "their ranges are weak, and we have the best hand a lot, but a lot of those weak hands over realise or have equity against us with one spade, so jamming makes the most EV by not letting these hands that wouldn't pay us off anyway from suddenly winning a hand when us jamming would always get folds".

That's a somewhat coherent argument, but I want you to explain why betting smaller or checker can't have other advantages that make it better.

Furthermore, what do you think our equity is when we get called? How high does it rank amongst other hands we have? And in that case, are you suggesting, for instance, that you'd jam any naked nut, second nut, and third nut flush draw? Because if you aren't, then you're making a big mistake, and is, as DooDoo is saying, looking at your hand from an absolute value and preflop standpoint and not thinking about how strong a hand it is relative to your range and this situation.

For that matter, is it the best way to play our nut flush draws by just jamming the flop?

If not, are we basically signalling to people we don't have a flush or a flush draw, so they should feel free to continue with any hand that has decent equity against it?

And I don't want any cop out "people don't think so it doesn't matter" responses. People do think, they just might not have a consistent way of thinking and it might be illogical, we still have to consider it and create a strategy around it.

From where I am standing, this is not that much different from the old guy who ships over his entire stack with AA (or JJ) vs a raise because he doesn't want to get called and not know where he's at.

Okay guys I know some people aren't fans of words so I ran a simulation on Equilab and put every Villain's preflop range as wide as 87o (very generous but it is to make a point).

Let's imagine a toy game scenario where once we raise preflop with this hand, and this flop comes out. That no one is allowed to put anymore money into the pot.

Every person has to turn their hand face up and the dealer is told to run the turn/river cards and declare the winner. In this toy game scenario this would be the equity each person has to the pot of $120



As you can see in this made up example: KK has roughly 33% equity against 3 other opponents with very wide ranges.

Now let's turn our scope back to reality. Let's assume we take the most popular line advised in this thread and shove the flop.

By shoving the flop we are bluffing. At best we have 33% equity against ALL HANDS in 3 opponents range. Now let's subtract the junk hands like 87o and 67 and our true equity to the pot would be less than 20%. Do you now understand why checking is so superior to betting? We isolate ourselves against the strongest parts of 3 opponents hands in a situation where the EV will be negative.

Now it is true, some % of the time we will win the $120 pot uncontested when we run into the bottom of our opponents distribution. But the EV of checking will always be higher than shoving. Each decision in poker is based on equities and ranges, with equilab we can clearly see how weak our hand is vs our opponents range without isolating ourselves against the strongest parts by shoving.

So I'm not an NL reg anymore so I'm rusty, but:

How about a 1/4 sizing strategy?

Not 100% sure if you were suggesting range check, I think you might have been, but if we expect villains to play incorrectly, as they most certainly will, I can see a b/f or similar to be quite good, as we can sometimes isolate against a weaker range by getting better to jam on us for protection, and called by worse (and sometimes take it down).

If they are loose enough we can also explo b/c vs the looser player but giving us the option to fold if it gets in multiway also seems like scenarios that could increase this strategy's EV.

This strategy would be negatively impacted by if villain jam bluffs a lot of weaker draws (T9 with Ts or something) or if they trap their nuts, but in practice, I think lots of players will just jam a flush here thinking we might have AK or AA with As, and also don't want to get it in dead with Ts9 type hands, and just always call and realise equity.

The thing with this strategy is that even if we don't gain much on the flop, that do we suddenly gain a very profitable turn jam/barrel when called on the flop.

You can argue that we can do that by checking and just betting the turn too, of course.

I think expecting villains to simply play close to gto and still have strong enough ranges after check throughs for us to not want to bet a brick turn is a bit exaggerated, but I don't know.

+100000000000000000000000

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Yeah I am advocating a range check. The problem with opening up the betting is we are going to under realize our equity. We have the worst possible position in the SB so we always act first. We have no way of knowing how our opponents will react to a small bet, sure if they just call with weak hands and shove strong hands then it is possible that strategy is superior but that is a slippery slope.

I'd rather range check the flop here and possibly lose some EV with this exact hand but I will more than make up that EV with the stronger holdings in my range.

You check advocates are doing great. Keep it up.

I tend towards GTO and balance too as a default, I guess I'm just suggesting that I think it's a viable option to look into strategies in this spot that involve betting too.

We can't know how people respond to bets, but I think making assumptions and population reads about these things is a reasonable thing for a live poker player to do to try increase their edge.

But, like, as I suggested in my first post I think, checking is quite reasonable too. People don't realise that a lot of cool things can happen for us when we check too. Saving money when people bet and jam, people starting to bluff with absurdly bad hands and we getting to pick it off, either playing normally or by utilising live reads even, whatever your skillset is.

People in general are too afraid to check or play passively, is what I've found.

Jfc you people are making this way more complicated than it is. You shove because people call with ANYTHING that remotely hits the board with this much dead money out there and low SPR. I mean you might even get called in 3 spots and still have the best hand. People are stupid, step out of your solver and into a low stakes poker game where everyone makes massive mistakes. They already made a huge mistake calling preflop, let them make some more.

I agree if you are primarily a live player than it is possible to increase your winrate in spots like these with exploitative plays. I mainly play online so unless I had a large sample vs these opponents and understood their tendencies, my default would just be my baseline strategy.

Like you said, if you check it could work out in your favor as well. People are used to responding to cbets, they are not used to responding to flop checks. Someone might spaz out with QJo no spade and you can snap him off with 80% equity in a situation where he would have folded if you shoved.

Don't underestimate the power of the check!

the stuff Sol and Doo have written is very interesting and i'm enjoying it, but i do agree with wj too because this is 1/3. playing a whole range as a check is usually losing value at this level. you can typically bet when you have it and still get called by worse and check when you don't and Vs wont punish you for it if they have nothing because Vs don't bluff enough.

You literally just saw a screenshot showing that we... don't want to jam and get called in 3 spots. Our hand is simply not that good. Do you know how much equity we have vs QJ w/ Js? You're acting like it's christmas if we get called by that hand.

I mean, I did advocate a bet :P, it doesn't matter, like, you can make money either way as long as you know what you're doing, and if you have no experience how to play a check you should a) keep betting for now b) learn. My issue is people who just act like there's no reason at all to consider alternatives. It's about a lot more than this one hand, it's a huge attitude problem.

Mod edit: insult scrubbed

poker is complicated. you are advocating an exploitative approach which is fair, but you should first learn the theoretically correct play before deviating from it. Not the other way around.

Yes I do, who cares if we get called by QxJs? There’s a ton of dead money in the pot. Let them flip. They aren’t folding QJhh either. Or a ton of other hands that we have dominated or flipping against. We can probably eliminate QQ from everyone’s range and it’s real hard to flop a flush. H should have the best hand on this flop well more than 75% of the time.

It is true, have you ever played live poker? Everyone just gonna put you on AK bro. “Why so much? Got ace king? Maybe with a spade? Ok I call”

Imagine thinking that you couldn’t possibly get called by a worse hand in a 1/3 game.

Jam flop. Qx call. As call. Brick brick. Triple up. Poker is easy.

You miss the point. You don't gain by getting called by that hand, or in fact most of the hands you seem to love to get called by. You'd make far more money putting money on a brick turn vs that hand than jamming flop.

If you compare jamming vs that hand vs open folding then obviously jamming is better, but that's pointless comparison.

And yet the turn is not a brick and we now have two outs vs QxJs. Just gonna c/f now? C/c turn and c/f river? Bet turn small and c/f river? Good thing they got there for free.

We are OOP and half the deck is not a brick turn.

LOL, yeah if it checks through 4way and there is 4 spades we can fold, just saved you a stack vs a hand that would've called anyway according to you.

There's a very basic misunderstanding of poker strategy here that I'm not going try fix.