I think this strategy is a big mistake, for two main reasons.

Reason one is that by going very multiway to the flop, we simply have to make the best hand in order to win the pot. We have very little steal equity postflop in multiway pots, unlike HU/3way flops where we can steal a lot of pots postflop with the worst hand.

Reason two is that we kill our implied odds. Here's a typical 1/3 NL example. Lets say effective stacks are $260 (87bbs). We see a 6 way limped pot and flop a set. Let's take the "worse" case scenario where only one person calls us down (so no raising, and no one else gets involved). We pot the flop to $20, we then pot the turn to $60, which sets up a PSB shove of $180 on the river. So basically in the "worse" case scenario, we enabled ourselves to play for $260 stacks, which is a 91:1 return on our preflop investment. Heck, even a "worser" case scenario of never having our river bet paid off, our return on investment is still 31:1. Throw in any raise or any other limpers coming along on the flop, and our potential return on investment is easily 100+:1. But now compare that to the times we juice the pot to $10 here. We still can only win the $260 effective stack, and even if we do that every single time thanks to our juicing, our return on investment in the "worse" case where we get paid off is an incredibly lame $10 to win $260 + $50 (preflop limpers money) = 31:1. We're decimating our implied odds by making these juicer raises.

Another drawback is that limping into a pot with a small pocket pair typically always allow us to call a single raise (as it will often go multiway) as we'll have the implied odds to do so. However, if we juice and then get 3bet (either by someone catching on to our play or simply catching a real hand), we'll have to fold in most cases due to us not having the implied odds due to typical smallish stack sizes.

GimoG

If it's pretty obvious that I am at a table with players who think this way but don't yet know me well enough to know I am capable of being tricky, I like making a small raise with a premium hand to induce a light 3bet.

I like manipulating the table to create exactly this table dynamic when I am at a table with some players who are good at bluffing but not so great at evaluating hand values in a multi-way pot.

what if the player has a brain knows ur doing this to his 7$ raise then when he gets aces he raises to 7$ flats ur 3bet. what do u do postflop?

1. person making it $7 preflop doesn't have a brain
2. person making it $7 preflop will still usually make it larger with aces because "what if someone calls and sucks out???"
3. if i'm squeezing, when called i'm cbetting a little over half pot virtually all the time because a half pot bluff only needs to work a third of the time and it probably works well over 50%. so the one time in however many villain doesn't fold does not matter because it's still a very profitable line overall.

in fact, continuing to make wimpy raises while waiting for aces or kings to "own" the loose 3betting guy is basically the worst adjustment possible and I'm thrilled if that's what villain does

50-1 is 2 pair ONLY. 20-1 is for 2 pair or BETTER (trips, quads, fullhouses, flushes, straights added in).

Flush draw is about 8-1. 4-1 is Flush OR straight draw combined.

Flop 2 pair or a straight? j/k

If you're going to wait for aces before making an adjustment, you're going to do a lot of waiting. And even then they will occasionally get cracked anyway, assuming you even get those aces and have the action go according to plan.

What percentage of your $7 raises will be with aces? You get a lot more suited connectors, one-gappers and lower pairs.

This is like saying "I'll stand up to you when I get aces, but meanwhile, feel free to own me in pot after pot when I raise to $7."

Jacks. I love owning loose 3betting guys with pocket jacks.

ummm i never said wait for aces. what im saying is that if you choose to make pot sweetener raises with your small pocket pairs and are making normal raises with your premium hands and someone is 3 betting your pot sweeteners then you happen to pick up aces or kings make an inducing bet of 7$. if you flat the 3bet hes going to cbet every board and then you can print money ez game

The replies in this thread are golden. I play about 40 hours a week and use to see some do this. I no longer see these players on a regular basis.

I agree, I don't see those players on a regular basis. I mostly see them during WPT series, out of town tourny grinders. I imagine that strategy is semi-profittable, but if you want to crush you need to raise enough to win the button and see a flop with 1-2 callers.

Creating any kind of hard-and-fast rule like "I raise multi-way hands for smaller" is not a good way to approach poker. You always need to be capable of adjusting your play.

If it gets folded around to you in the CO and you have 3 loose bad players behind 100+ BB deep who aren't thinking about ranges or betsizes, it's almost certainly optimal to vary your open sizing: say 3x w SCs/small pps, 6x w big aces/pairs/broadways, or what have you. You really need to be good at identifying who is paying attention to betsizing and how they react to it, though.

Now that you mention it the ones I did see doing this also played tourneys semi often which proves that its bad even further. Tourney players(especially low stake) are noturiously bad at cash games.

I'm not seeing why this is so great if you only add pocket kings. You might not even get aces or kings. Unless you happen to get aces or kings several times in a session, it's not going to be enough to slow the loose 3-bettor down.

There's some good stuff here. I need to go over the math when I have more time to see if it makes sense, I appreciate venice10 trying to explain it, but there' something interesting I've noticed:

At LLSNL, if you're table image is good (you've been winning hands and showing down strength), and none of you're villains are too observant, you're have almost as much fold equity with a $7 open as you do as you do with $15.

In one hand in particular.

Hero ( $400 ) - 98dd EP - Showing down with extremely strong hands, winning, villain
throughout the night is complaining how I have his number. Our most recent hand was me collecting $150 from villain with KK (which I opened the pot to $15 with ).

Villain($300 ) - QQds EP+1 - sLAG gambly, been turning to fit or fold vs hero throughout our time together because of me dominating him. He's actually one of the better $1/2 regs at game. He's a middle aged asian regular, who switches between $2/5 and $1/2 based on his streaks, owns his own restaurant.

7 players $1/2
PF:
I open to $7, V calls, fold's around, SB GAI in for $17, c c.
Flop:
A64dd.
I bet $20, v calls.
Turn:
Jd.
I bet $40, v tanks forever then folds QQ face up. He comments to me, I thought you had a Kd. The river was diamond too.

He's just convinced I have broadways or premium hand. That's one of things I noticed about the good players doing this, is that they still have fold equity against the tighter more fit or fold preflop callers. So even if you don't hit the flop, you can still fold people out, and if you do hit the flop, it's hard to see.

I'm still up to debate whether or not this good, but I think it's important to be open minded to possible exploitative strategies.

Pot sweetener raises with small PPs are bad for a few reasons. Most of the value of PPs comes from stacking people with overpairs and strong top pairs. If everyone else has limped, guess what? Either no one has a hand like that or someone is going to drop the hammer with AA/KK. So the only way you are going to get stacks in is if someone flops a draw that they wont fold or if someone flops two pair. If someone flops two pair and you flop a set the money will go in unless you get a horrible run out. No need to juice it pre.

Putting more money in the pot in a spot where you arent going to win without flopping a set is terrible imo. As others have said it is an implied odds hand and you are killing your implied odds. If you cant get stacks in with someone that flops a big hand then you are doing something wrong imo. If you hit a set play it hard and bet big. If you are in EP and stacks are deep you can go for a check raise but otherwise just bet, bet, bet.

^^^^ @ oldschool

I'm not sure what that example proves? That we can win pots when we flop the ~nuts (i.e. flush draw + gutshot)? That underpairs can eventually fold on A high boards where the only draw came in on the turn in a protected pot where the likelihood of us bluffing should be nil?

GcluelessNLnoobG

A small raise might make it more likely that your set stacks someone with TPGK if they believe strongly in the idea of not going broke in a limped pot, so that they play in a way that lets you only get two streets of value. Some players also won't bluff (or semibluff) in a limped pot because it is "too small", but will do so now that you've sweetened the pot enough to make fancy plays seem worth it.

@gobbledygeek
I agree, the example is terrible, but I was mainly interested in the villains thinking of how he put me on broadways, and that if he would have called, he would have been good.

I still think villains will call with TPTK type of hands in LLSNL to pot sweetners( good villains will 3bet), and with so many going to the flop, you can probably get someone to hit enough where you can get 3 streets of value, they can hit TPTK, 2 pair, tripps on a paired board, etc..

But this is an example of an entirely different concept.

The problem with this theory involving pot sweetener raises (and you are most certainly right, these guys WILL stack of with the hands you describe) is that SSCs and even SPPs don't flop well enough often enough to continue, meaning your losses are far outweighing the few times the stars align and you hit a great hand WHILE another opponent hits enough to stack off.

The math isn't always as clear cut as someone's analysis earlier in this thread might lead you to believe, either. It doesn't take into account the times you might have stacked someone who folds to your "pot sweetener" raise. An easy example of this is when you hold say JTdd in late position, and make a raise after several limpers. The BB looks down at 35dd, and decides to chuck it. 3 s come down, and you could have stacked him. This is an extreme example, of course, and isn't likely to happen very often, but how do you quantify all the times someone who folds would have caught enough of a piece to pay you 1 or 2 additional bets?

Edit: The math also ignores the case where someone would have stacked off in an unraised pot also (meaning the raise gained no reward for higher risk). I'm also not picking on the guy who put it in, he said it was rough math, and it is, a little too rough IMO, with everything left out tipping the math toward the bad side.

If villains are folding too often postflop, don't you want them putting more money in preflop?

Yes, and we want to play more postflop hands with them. We need to figure out the maximum betting size we can come up with where they'll come in with marginal hands, and then fold too much postflop.

My point is that, in general, people raise with hands that can make TPTK eg. AJ, KQ. As the rest of my post explains, we are mainly hoping to stack random two pairs and get value from draws when none of the villains raise pre.

Pot builder raises with weak hands is nothing more than results oriented thinking. You remember all the times you hit and forget all the times you didnt. Unless you're trying to balance your range or outplay thinking players all you're really doing when you raise 56s preflop is gambling.