One other thing that I just thought of regarding my litmus test above:

Since poker is all about reciprocality, now compare your postflop plan of attack with the plan of Joe Fish if he was in your spot. Are you confident that your plan of attack is going to be a lot better than that of Joe Fish? If so, you should be ok with being in this spot.

GnotreallyallthatconfidentthatIhavethatmuchofalegu ponJoeFishinthisspotG

1. Obviously, bluffing into 4 people is suicide. That's what I'm saying. In multiway pots, you generally need a made hand to win the pot. If the pot is heads up or 3-way, you can win a pot with or without a hand. You can still win the $300 pots if you're not in a big multiway pot. Overpair vs TP happens with one or two villains, too. With smaller fields, you can win big pots, medium pots, and small pots.

2. Yeah, I'm not in the JJ limping camp I guess that's correct about it being harder to be bluffed with low SPRs. That's just a higher variance style than I'm used to. Makes sense though. You just need to get used to the fact that you're going to get stacked a decent amount of the time. It's just that the times you stack them will outweigh that.

Joe fish probably shouldn't have raised preflop in this spot; but if we can start to teach joe fish, or anyone who cares to learn how to deal with these situations I think the this board could be much better.

Start from pre and your general position and general hand, we have a non-premium, non-small, middle pocket pair, (88-JJ)
Start to think about when we make our standard raise, what will our general plan of attack be if the pot ends up
A.) HU
B.) 3-way-4way
C.) Multiway
(and I mean this especially as opposed to: oh sh*t I have JJ, I got 3 callers, an over hit, no one ever folds ever, I give up. which IS terrible in most of the 200-500NL games that I play)

Since we're 3-way 4-way, we need to think about what the 2-3 villains calling ranges from the specific positions they called from are.

Short end joe fish,
Ok, now that we have that, we pretty much always cbet this board (or whatever, debate, but I do). Here's how we are going to react to calls/raises from the different players and different textures of turn/river cards.

This is how we exploit and grind better. Where is this non-beginner; but not quite advanced board on 2+2?

Hands starting in a general fashion like this need to be the subject of more threads. imo

^^^^^^ OH, and WHY???? with the exception of some of the most seasoned posters, is a question which is almost never addressed adequately enough

Thanks for agreeing with me.

Mostly agree with ATsai. Caveat being that since pre flop EV determinations take all possible game trees into account so for some (mostly bad) players, limping or raising to some absurd size might have a higher ev than normal raise sizes (I think we are talking about JJ utg @100 bb's). That being said: play better postflop. Also, reciprocity is stupid.

TBH, that's not that tough post flop. First of all with a single suited flop, there's only a 16% chance someone doesn't have a FD in this scenario and a 36% chance someone has a flush. Add in the chances of another suited card coming or a set/2 pair, I'm looking to c/f this most of the time. All you have is a bluff catcher.

The big thing is to not fall in love with your hand. Treat them like gigolos or whores. If they don't please you, dump them.

There are only two spades on that flop, so I'm going to say there's less than a 36% chance of someone having a flush.

Regardless, the last line of the post is well worth the quote. I always be treating my hands like whores...

This statement feels like it rests on a belief that NLHE is mainly about bluffing. I notice that some players are uncomfortable playing at tables where conditions dictate that they shouldn't bluff much, so they try to ramp up the aggression to change the conditions to something that suits their preferred LAG style. Instead of trying harder to thin the field to make their c-bets more effective, sometimes the adjustment they should be making is to simply c-bet less. Some players are resistant to that adjustment because in their mind that's not real poker.

I generally agree with this. For example, I think bet-sizing to try to avoid giving your opponent the right odds to set-mine is the easy way, but you can make more money if you learn how to not always pay off and lose your stack with an overpair vs a set.

It's more about profit than being about "real poker". Let's look at 2 examples heads up. The same 2 examples in a 4-way pot. Suppose these are the hands:

$1/2 $300 eff.
Hero has AK on button
V1 has 88 in BB
V2 has AJ in MP
V3 has 66 in CO

In scenario 1,
Limps to Hero who raises to $20 pre
Only V3 calls
Flop comes T72
V3 checks
Hero bets $25
V3 folds
(or V3 calls and hero double barrels the turn and takes it)

In scenario 2,
Hero raises to $20 pre
Only V2 calls (with AJ)
Flop comes A55
Hero bets $25
V2 calls
Turn 3
Hero bets $60
V2 calls
River 6
Hero shoves
V2 calls

In the first two scenarios with thinned fields, you can win both with and without a hand. Now, the multiways:

Scenario 3
Pre-flop
limps to Hero who raises to $15
All Vs call
Flop comes T72 (same as scenario 1)
Checks around
Turn 3
Any V leads out and we're folding

Scenario 4
Hero raises to $15 pre and all Vs call
Flop comes A55 (same as scenario 2)
Hero bets three streets and AJ pays off three streets

We get paid either way when the dominated V hits top pair. With the thinned field, we also have the advantage of getting paid when we miss.

You seem to ignore scenarios where multiple villains pay off in a multi-way pot.

Essentially the only ways this happen are:

1. Coolers

2. V bricks a monster draw.

Notice that V does not make a mistake in either.

And Hero got lucky. Play probably doesn't affect outcome much.

Some bad players don't adjust their calling standards in multi-way pots. It's not shocking for me to have AQ on a AK569 board and get called down by both AT and KQ on two and sometimes three streets of value (usually because I read them as being weak and make bets that are just small enough for them to call). Even with another player calling me, I will sometimes get called by a player with QQ who can't give up his hand.

I played a hand this week where a decent LAG raised UTG and I called on the button with ATs in what turned out to be a six-way pot. The flop came ace high, the preflop raiser checked, and UTG+1 bet out for about 2/3 pot. Since this was a loose regular who I know well, I insta-mucked when it got to me because I know what his range looks like in this spot. He ended up showing down AK, which is close to the bottom of his range. He got called down by another player who couldn't even beat an ace. The player with AK is capable of big bluffs, but he understands that this is a horrible scenario for bluffing, so his range is pure value in the absence of any likely draws. I can make a hero call against him heads-up but fold this hand.

I play mainly against regulars so I often have a good idea of who will c-bet TT on a queen-high board in a four-way raised pot and who will check behind. Some of my ideas probably don't make as much sense in a tourist-heavy poker room where you are often playing against unknowns. I'll admit to often choosing to keep pots smaller against a group of random players until I develop my reads.

I think there is a bit of a disconnect here between:
The question being asked.
The problem that we are discussing.
The solutions that we are giving.
The results being drawn from all the talk here and in other threads.

First:
If you know what you are doing, understand how to hand read, understand relative vs absolute hand stregth, are capable of bet/folding and a variety of other topics then often it is more profitable to have multiple people in the hand.

However:
If you don't know what you are doing, and don't understand thsese concepts, or feel that it's too difficult to navigate a field of 3 - 5 callers then typically you want to set up situations where you don't have to do these things.
Note: Often you will be passing up a profitable spot by not knowing when to value bet your TP for 2+ streets into a 4 way crowd or when to slow down. But by avoiding these spots until you understand them can be +EV for you if you will avoid a -EV spot of not knowing when to bet or fold. Not knowing when to call or raise etc.

Many of the people here are still learning the game or at least learning the game past the simple bingo style that we all like to play against. As such many posters here tend to tailor their answers to someone who is still learning the game. So, when you see a lot of people asking 'what should I do here?' then we are going to assume they didn't know how to handle their 4 opponents that they got.

As such, it can and often will be better for them to make a bigger raise size to mitigate the chance they see that situation that they simply can't turn into a +EV decision for them.

As you get better you learn to deal with more complex situations and more variables, and you can understand how to play hands in different ways with different numbers of players in a hand. And at that point, typically you stop asking 'what do I do with AA now that I got 4 callers pre flop?' And at that point, the community tends to stop telling you to raise more.

When people make comments like "Raise more to thin the field," those comments sometimes seem too results oriented to me.

I think the case for thinning the field has been misrepresented here at times, and other times hasn't been argued for that well. I don't think anybody here would argue that players should try to thin the field because playing against 3-4 opponents is scary. That's not the same as trying to emphasize the importance of avoiding big mistakes.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned is that thinning the field will put us in positions with a strong starting hand and with the initiative against 1-2 players that tend to play poorly after the flop. I find those spots very easy to play when my opponent plays fit or fold, or calls too much, or some combination of both.

I raise JJ though. The hand is strong enough and gives me so many favorable flops that I find I take down a lot of decent sized pots with it. Sure, I will end up in some tougher spots which hurts me, but overall I don't feel that uncomfortable if I get 3-4 callers.

I don't think about thinning the field that much with big hands when I'm playing. If I do have that in mind, I'm also going to raise thinking that someone is going to call. Also, if 3-4 people keep calling my raises with strong hands, why not try to raise more? I'll either play against 1-2 weak opponents who called bigger raises, or I'll get more value if 3-4 players call again.

I worry more about thinning the field when I'm raising limpers in late position with some of the weaker, more marginal hands. When I make those raises I don't mind if everyone folds and I don't mind a caller or two because I'll usually win after the flop when my opponents are playing fit or fold.

I'm kind of all over the place but I'm just throwing out my thoughts on this.

Excellent question however as Venice said it may attract trolling etc. To me thsi might be due to how difficult answers are to articulate/quantify here.

Some of the more difficult hands to play are the 4-5 way escalated pots and we have always heard that thinning the field allows for higher profit. This is not necessarily so however the skill and intuitive math needed for big multiway pots is enormous I believe.

NLH is basically solved (shorthanded in 2014) except for V hand ranges and tendencies etc. however when you throw is all the possibilities of multiple hand ranges it is very very difficult. We guesstimate hand ranges anyway, and now compound it with multiple entries it becomes very grey IMO.

Big multiway pots/games are more for people who love the action and huge pots etc. I myself prefer HU, 4max, 6max, where more intuitive mental processing comes into play (along with precise ranging rather than the shotgun approach of winning gigantic multiway pots etc. HU is one of the most difficult structures of NLH, however I feel far more comfortable at HU than 5 way action.

Maybe that also has to do with what I am used to. I guess find the balance that suits you and attempt to sway the pots in that direction would be my best answer.

VERY well said.

If our plan is to check/fold this scenario, then we should be limping in, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG