Almost every time there is a thread where OP raises and gets three callers, there is at least one poster saying hero should have raised more to avoid getting exactly three callers. Sometimes, it seems that these posters think there is a magic formula for determining how to avoid every finding yourself in a four-way raised pot.

Based on experience, I suggest that for any reasonable raise size with at least three other people who haven't folded yet (so, not doing something like shoving for 100BB after four people limp in), you will get exactly three callers some percentage of the time. I personally don't get annoyed finding my way in a four-way raised pot. I notice that some players don't like it so I occasionally make a slightly loose call after their raise because I know it will mean two more players call behind, leading to frustration and potential tilt if they lose with a good hand.

So, here are some questions I'd like people to think about:

- If you know that when three people limp and you raise OTB you will get three callers x% of the time, for what value of x do you not feel tempted to increase your standard raise size so that you can decrease x? For example, three people limp and you raise to 8xBB. 20% of the time, you get exactly three callers. 5% of the time, at least one blind comes along so you get more than three callers. 75% of the time, you get zero, one, or two callers. Does that makes you want to adjust your preflop raise sizing?

-If you knew that making a preflop raise in middle or late position will get you exactly three callers, but limping would probably lead to a six- or seven-way limped pot, are there hands that you would normally raise with that you would instead prefer to over-limp with?

-You have JJ on the button after three players limp. If you raise to X, you will get three callers unless someone was slowplaying preflop. If you raise to X+1, You will probably just take down the blinds and the three calls unless someone was slowplaying preflop. Do you prefer to raise to X or X+1? Is there a value for X where your preference shifts? If I hadn't mentioned it, would you have considered the options of making a pot-building raise of less than X to manipulate SPR or just limping on the button with JJ? What if you had AJs or AQo or QQ or 99?

-If you are uncomfortable finding yourself in a four-way raised pot, is it because you can't figure out the right c-betting percentage when you miss the flop or have an overcard to your pocket pair? Is it because you feel you get felted too often in this spot when you have an overpair or TPTK? Or is it something else?

-If you find yourself in a deep-stacked game with a few action junkie LAGs who create a shocking number of 3bet four-way pots preflop, do you feel out of your element, do you nit up and trap, or do you adjust in a way that embraces the high variance train?

I think this has the potential to be a good discussion thread, but worry that it is going to devolve into a trolling fest.

So much of this depends on the skill of the player in question, stack sizes and position. In general, the less of an advantage you have on the field, the smaller the stacks and the earlier the position, the more you want to raise bigger to narrow the field to 1 or at most 2 players on the flop. That said, most of the OP in a HH thread over estimate their advantage over the field.

Totally depends on table dynamics and villains. At 2/5, sometimes 4x it gets heads up and other times 7x or 8x gets you 4 callers. Adjust accordingly to get full value and thin the field.

Doesn't "totally depends on table dynamics and villains" describe most interesting poker questions?

No matter the raise size (unless it is ridiculously large), you are going to get it heads up a fraction of the time and multiple callers a fraction of the time. Both of those fractions are going to be non-zero. What I want people to think about is the point where raising more and more in an attempt to thin the field becomes an exploitable over-adjustment, so you just have to live with the fact that you are going to get callers at some tables and learn how to play poker in a four-way raised pot.


If it goes limp-limp-limp on a hand in your first orbit at the table, you raise your standard raise amount for three limpers, and only the limpers call, do you instantly decide to adjust your raise size if you get three limpers (not necessarily the same players) and you have a raise-worthy hand on the very next hand of play or do you raise the same amount?

I "struggle" with the sort of question because there are so many considerations in play:

1. If you vary your PFR size, you have to balance. I've seen so many people have PFR tells at 1/3 or 2/5 that make hand reading pretty easy. (I've also seen this in 3-bet raise sizes.) So if you're going to vary your PFR size, then you have to introduce balancing into the equation and vary the amounts and quality of hands.

2. I think that there's something to be said for maintaining a uniform PFR raising scheme, if you're opening action (e.g. no limpers, you make it X. 1 limper, you make it X + Y, etc.) It seems to be the best way to disguise your range.

The problem with #2 is that some players are inelastic as to the PFR size they'll call. That is, they'd call 3x the BB to 5x the BB with the exact same range. Further compounding this problem is that this probably holds true for most players at a 1/3 or 2/5 table.

This is probably low on a list of criteria as to who you want to pick to be on your left, but as you get a read on a table and can get a seat change button, I think the GTO answer is to put someone on your left who likes to fold a lot or shows the most sensitivity to PFR sizing. Once you induce one fold, you're more likely to induce more, since each successive player is guaranteed to get worse odds.

Or maybe the more helpful way to put this, is that this might be a reason to keep a maniac or LAG away from your left.

If you choose maximum disguise for your hands, you risk more multiway pots. If you choose to vary your PFR size, you run the risk of PFR tells and have to think about introducing leveling into your game (which means you level your way into multi-way pots with big hands sometimes, or into H/U spots with dominated hands).

And if your table is too LAG and insufficiently deep, adding variance to your PFR size by means of increasing it might just cost you money because everyone's calling range is more or less equally inelastic. (And really, how many people appreciate the difference between $9 and $12 in a 1/3 game?)

For me, I've settled on raising set amounts based on whether I'm opening the action or based on the # of limpers in a pot. It allows for hand disguise, and if I still get in a multiway pot, at least the SPR are smaller, which simplifies decision-making.

I think some phenomenal discussion on exploiting player types and also planning your hand from preflop through later streets based on different possible scenarios could come from this thread.

I'm also glad to see someone respectable start this thread. My vote would be for most of these questions, and others like them, to be broken up into their own individual threads as I can see this easily getting tangled.

With that said, I'll tackle one...

Yes, definitely. If I had a hand such as Ax (in particular where x is a wheel card) suited and knew definitely that a raise would get me a 3-way pot, while a limp would lead to a 6-7 way pot I would limp every time.
In the 200NL games I play a 6-7 way limp pot is going to also contain a player with a KT,K9,K8 suited type hand and I'm more than happy to allow them to make an essentially unfoldable (for them) second nut and stack them for $2. This doesn't even take into account times when our villains have smallers flushes, which even if they do fold eventually, often pay us for big bets on 2 streets anyway.
In this same scenario, if I had 88 and knew that I only had two options for how many opponents I would face on the flop, I would raise every time.
In the hand with 88 6-7 ways, I will only flop a set and be able to continue so often. In addition most of the hands that I will tend to extract big bets from against my opponents will tend to be draws; still leaving them with decent equity, and often implied odds, in multiway pots.
In a short handed pot I can confidently cbet and take down a healthy pot (in $200, I raise to $12 and get 3 callers, pot ~$40/20BB) on the flop, or turn a huge % of the time, vastly increasing my profits in this spot.

Anyway, good luck to this thread. Definitely a possibility for incredible content imo.

probably because those recommending to thin the field think winning pots > making money.

Ha, I'm definitely hating on most HHs where the raise size gets us to a 4+ way pot. All good questions, imo, and I'll try to take a stab at them in point form...

- I totally agree that sometimes no matter what we try, intend, expect, etc. that sometimes the cards were just setup so that when we raise we're going to go 4+ ways to the flop no matter what we do; for example, if 3 pocket pairs limp to us and we raise AA on the button and the BB has a pocket pair, guess what, we're going 5ways to the flop every single time pretty much regardless of our raise size; however, imo, we should do our best to limit the amount of times this happens; with TP type hands, if player A's raise size creates bloated multiway pots 75% of the time versus player B's 50% of the time versus our 25% of the time, I believe that we will be in a lot more profitable situation overall longterm

- so I agree that there ain't necessarily a magic formula to guarantee to thin the field on a raise; but some formula's are definitely better than others; for instance, if you are sitting in a typical 1/3 NL game and your open raise is always to $6 whereas my open raise is always to $25, I'll guarantee you that I'm going to thin the field more than you (not every single time mind you, but way more overall)

- if I knew a raise was going to see a 4+ way flop a lot of the time, I would tighten up hugely; I would much rather see a multiway limped pot with a large range of hands especially those that, while having good TP quality, also have good multiway quality; for instance, AKs plays well as a TP hand (in a smallway pot) but also plays well as a multiway hand, so at a loose table, I'm totally cool with just getting into a pot for cheap with it; ditto for medium big pairs like JJ/TT, at a totally loose table I'm cool with just limping in (especially in EP when I don't know what's going on yet) and almost setmining; of course this depends on stack sizes, but let's assume everyone is 100bb+ deep and not shortstacked; so at loose non-short tables, I could easily narrow my raising range in EP-MP to QQ+/AKo/AQo, and loosen that up a bit in LP where I have a better idea if a raise is going to narrow the field (or of course go for a limp/reraise, which is often a better option at loose aggro tables)

- I would typically raise a hand like JJ on the button, even at a loose table (where I'd often just limp JJ in EP-MP); in the end, if I'm going to build a big bloated multiway pot, I'm damn well going to do that in position rather than OOP; still, I'd like to narrow the field, so I would tend to raise large in an attempt to do that, and if it just takes things down there, oh well, not great and not what I wanted, but next hand please

- I definitely don't feel uncomfortable in multiway spots when I whiff, because I'm done with the hand (cbetting complete air in multiway pots, irregardless of board texture, is not profitable, imo)

- the overall problem with raising with TP type hands and getting into a bloated multiway pot is simply this: we get ourselves into a catch-22 situation where (a) the SPR is typically quite small where we have zero wiggle room postflop (where literally one bet might be enough to commit us to the pot) but at the same time (b) we've offered all our opponents terrific implied odds to stack us so long as the play okish postflop
- ex: $300 effective stacks, we raise to $20 with AA and get 5 callers; so pot is $120, we have $280 left (SPR is a stupid small 2.3); even a mere 1/2 PSB that gets things HU will create a $240 pot with just $220 left; what's our turn/river plan? can we ever fold on a non-******ed run out? and yet at the same time, our opponents all got very good implied odds preflop of 20x, so none of them are really making a mistake seeing a flop with a speculative hand and trying to flop gin
- now, admittedly, not everyone will play great preflop, and with the AA hand we'll probably always stack TP; but I'd still rather have 66 here than AA cuz I know exactly when I'm a huge favourite and when I'm a huge dog and can play perfectly postflop

- one other thing regarding this idea
- in many ways, NL is about avoiding the "Big Mistake"
- it doesn't do us any good to play "perfect" poker for 199/200 hands in our 6.5 hour poker session if that 1/200 hand is a big mistake that costs us our whole stack
- so what is a big mistake? a big mistake is getting in our whole stack with the worst of it, or folding a huge pot with the best of it; what do these mistakes have in common? the pot is big; and how does a pot start to get big? by raising preflop
- our poor opponents get themselves into terrible spots all the time; of the 200 hands they see in a session, they probably get themselves into a spot where they can make a big mistake like 20 times, whereas we might just get ourselves into that spot 3 times; so guess who's going to make more big mistakes overall; they are
- so, in super loose games, I'd rather just keep the pot small until I want to do otherwise, and a lot of this means just seeing a flop for cheap
- of course, I realize there is a slippery slope to this, which is "hey, I should just fold AA preflop cuz that way I never get into a big pot and therefore never make a big mistake"; obviously we have to have a little common sense, but in the end, we don't outplay our opponents by being wizards and being able to make the correct decision all the time in the above example where we have an SPR of ~2.3 against a zillion opponents; instead, we outplay our opponents by getting ourselves into a lot fewer difficult situations thruout the session than they do

- and, as always, a lot of this depends on our postflop skill, but even then, although while we are probably a lot better than our opponents in a lot of situations, I think there are certain situations where we overestimate it (and, again, the AA example above is a good example; I think you are fooling yourself if you think you're going to make the correct decision much more often than your opponents in the exact same spot)

- ETA: the one other thing I forgot to address was that raising to create bloated pots has 2 other negative affects (especially with speculative hands), those being (a) we have very little FE postflop (unlike HU / 3way pots where we can often steal the pot with the worst hand due to having initiative), and (b) raising speculative hands preflop destroys our implied odds (where playing for 100bb stacks in position in a 8way pot is not really any more difficult to do with regards to betsizing)

Gnicetopic,imoG

I think that is far too simplistic. Not everyone who wants to thin the field has the OMC-I-always-raise-AA-50x-because-I-don't-want-to-get-them-cracked reason for doing so.

The period should be after the word value. If thinning the field is a result great. If not great.

I think this is oversimplified too. As stacks become deeper, preflop hand strengths really start to converge. Getting in 2% of our stack as a slight favourite preflop isn't the coup you think it is if that is going to get us in extremely difficult spots postflops for the remaining 98% of stacks.

Gwestillhave3postflopstreetstogetvalueifweseefitG

I think people/posters don't realize what live poker is about. Sometimes you can make a 3.5-4x raise preflop and get zero callers a lot of times and then the next time you make it 5-7x, you get 4-6 callers. Also, you can not play a hand for 2 hours, make your first preflop raise and get 4-6 callers.


Also wow, GG, Limping JJ is beyond terrible.

GG, it sounds like you read and re-read Professional No Limit Holdem by Ed Miller/Sunny Mehta/Matt Flynn about a million times.

The vast majority of decent winning live NLHE players who have read that stupid book would probably have 3x-4x their current win-rate if they had never read that stupid book.

This is a really interesting point. I've found myself frustrated (confused?) after getting multiple callers after an EP raise, leaving me, e.g. 3rd of 5 to act. Generally, initiative isn't worth a lot in this circumstance. This has led me recently to playing (perhaps overly) tight in early and mid position.

Might have to consider how "squeezing" (not a true squeeze obv) might play out in a multiway pot, especially when hero has position.

The whole concept of making an overly loose call against the preflop raiser simply because you are hoping for several callers behind you to "handcuff" the preflop raiser against using his preflop initiative well...is ******ed.

Why would you purposely put yourself in a horrible spot? Flatting with a mediocre hand directly behind the original PFR and getting 2+ callers behind you will just lead to horrific situations where you have no idea where you are at postflop because those "other callers" will be "checking to the raiser." Instead of your making the preflop raiser's life miserable, you just end up making your own life miserable.

It's not like I think PNLHE is the bible or anything, plus I don't agree with all their conclusions / etc. But as I've said before, I think it does a good job of quantifying concepts that HOC was perhaps grasping at in terms of pot control and realizing the difficult situations that one can get themselves into (and, unlike HOC, realizing that this begins with preflop and not the flop).

Gyou'resayingIcouldhavea36bb/hrwinrate,wow,I'vegottostartreadingdifferentbooksG

As always, it depends.

If the table is shortish stacked, ABC, etc., then I'm typically always opening JJ.

But if the table is deep, tricky, loose, we're OOP, etc. then limping is perfectly fine. We can get into some horrendous situations here in a raised pot (bloated, OOP against multiple opponents, some of whom are tricky), so limping here can hardly be "beyond terrible".

GimoG

I've been thinking about this concept a lot in the last month. Jonathan Little wrote a column in Card Player about how he WANTS lots of people to call his pre-flop raises. He doesn't want to thin the field. His theory was that he has more equity.

For example, if we raise AA to $20 pre-flop and get one caller, we might have 78% equity in a $40 pot. (Ugh...what a bad time for my PokerStove to stop working). If we raise AA to $20 and get 7 callers, maybe our equity drops to 23%, but the pot is $160. So, we make more money for everyone that calls with a worse hand. JL doesn't mind losing more often. He just cares about equity.

There's two reasons I don't like that theory.

1. A thinned field makes c-bet bluffs (and double-barrels) a lot more effective. You're going to take down more pots without the best hand. It's very difficult to bluff 4 people off their hands.

2. What GG said. You're setting yourself to potentially make a "big mistake". You're not always going to know when you're ahead. The guy with 75s probably knows where he's at in the hand better than the guy with AA. When you have the goofy two pair, it's easy to stack a guy with AA. When you're the guy with AA, it's tough to tell when someone's got a goofy two pair.

^^^^

That theory more applies to Limit, imo. In Limit, we're mostly concerned about whether we have an equity advantage with the particular bet, and when we do, we're happy with getting a zillion callers. It's not the same in NL, imo, because that single bet and the possible few single limit future bets ain't what we have at risk; our whole stack is at risk. Got in $5 preflop with a 50% equity advantage over the 7way field? Congrats, go buy yourself a cookie. Oh, wait, we're now playing for $300 stacks postflop now? Cookie wasn't worth the risk, imo.

GcluelessNLnoobG

If PNLHE is the 3rd nut low, then HOC is the 2nd nut low.

And if you had never read either of those horrible books, you could be a $50+/hour winner at 2/5 NL instead of whatever 1/3 NL win-rate that you have now.

1) In spots where you're getting called 4+ ways, your cbets should never be for bluff. You should always be betting for value. Poker isn't about taking down the most pots. It's about making the most money. I'm more content winning 1 pot for $300 than winning 10 pots for $20.


2) Doesn't matter when the stacks aren't that deep and the SPR is relatively low. Ironically, when you limp hands like JJ+, you're playing a deeper game and SPR is relatively high, and you're more likely to get bluffed off your hand (because they could have anything!!)

2nd and 3rd nut low? Seriously?

If reading the 2nd and 3rd nut low books can, in part, help a player maintain a decent winrate over a ok sample size, then point me in the direction of the 1st nut low, imo.

Again, I don't agree with everything in those books, but they still contain extremely valuable information that most players, let alone every single noob player (this is a beginner's forum, after all), would find useful.

G/derailG

LLSNL is not a beginner's forum. There is a beginners forum for a reason.

Actually, llsnl IS a beginner's forum, and when the existence of this forum was being debated, iirc one of the arguments against it was "there's already a beginner's forum."

It is definitely true than we will get bluffed off hands like TP in multiway limped pots due to not being able to commit stacks in high SPR pots. But, that is fine. Yes, it is definitely a mistake, but in the long run it isn't a large one (folding the best hand in a small pot cannot possibly be considered a large mistake). And, as you say in point 1, you'd much rather win 1 big pot for $300, and that pot will come soon enough and make up for these little pot mistakes.