Hi all,

Something I’ve been looking at recently is card distribution and equity in multi-way preflop situations. Michelle Obama’s famous “when they go low, we go high” phrase comes to mind, except the inverse applies here.

For example, we limp in ep with 76544ds and there is a raise, a 3!, and a cold 4! from pretty face up abc players. If they are playing reasonable ranges they are probably blocking each other in the high card distribution range. I am wondering whether that translates into an equity advantage for a primarily low to medium holding, predicting the remaining cards in the deck are also going to be on the low/medium spectrum.

Anyway in this example I limp/called figuring that my guess was correct, and the flop was 235r and I scooped. Seemed like a genius play.

In common another example, when two players have aces they can frequently be dogs to the third playerÂ’s hand. I regularly get it in when I am confident the other two all in players have aces, with mixed results.

In yet another example, I gambled with 87655ds and lost to AKK when a third deeper stacked player most likely had AA, and there were multi other all ins, again figuring they were mostly probably in the high card range and I was pushing an edge. This time I lost, however. (Felt like an idiot.)

These are only a couple data points but if it is +EV to get it in in these common preflop spots we should be doing it. Thoughts?

Thanks,
DT

You're right, thats pretty much known as floating. like when players in nlhe 3 bet or 4 bet aces or kings and it comes around the ring and you call with 67hh. but im sure you know this lol.

the problem is you're getting it in pre, and big pairs will always have the equity advantage over you. theyre made hands.

just float instead, get in a juicy pot pre, and if you like the flop, shove.
the spr will be low enough they'll have to shove too.
IE youre on the button, 3 bet with 6c7c8h9h, MP 4 bets you, call, flop comes 458 rainbow, villain shows AAJ7. boom gl.

Stack sizes matter a lot.

Almost certainly better not to have a pair in your hand, also not going down as low as a 4.
5 card it becomes more weird too because when the cold 4bet is AA (maybe always?) it might still be any AA which isn't AAA or AA999 hand.
Also depends on if the 3bettor ever shoves non-AA hands after you call, or folds non double suited KK.

Going low is a lot better in 4 card than 5 card. Low orientated hands are mostly losers in multiway pots. You really want it to be HU or maybe 3w to justify lack of nut potential.

Against weak players you Sometimes have better implied odds but its not a good reason to play hands like that. By joining the weak players in playing weak ranges you are making it a lot easier for them to beat you and outplay you.

I ran a couple sims out of curiosity using the above examples and we in fact are +EV or pushing an equity advantage with these holdings when we are sure we are up against high ranges in the top 20%+...in one sim we had the most equity with 26% four ways. 6789T performed similarly.

So if you feel like stacking the entire table in one hand and won't tilt if you lose, go for it.

This seems like a terrible idea in hold 'em.

Dumbo interesting post and something I've been thinking about myself in 4 card. I've noticed a pattern in multi way all in pots that go 3-4 ways that 1 player has AAxx another has AKQx and another has KQxx where xx can be KQJ10. In these spots broadway rundowns or Kings perform poorly. There is absolutely an argument imo to be made in specific scenarios depending on SPR middle/low rundowns are worth GII. Cant comment on how this applies differently in 4 card vs. 5 card but would be curious on others thoughts.


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I did a plo4 sim too and it looks like the equity is actually better for the low hand in plo5.

Show some of these sims please.

Dumbo, biased sims are a trap and often intellectually dishonest.

Yes, like any 4 cards without a pair is printing when you get it against 2 other players with aaxx in regular PLO. Or whatever sims where opponents block each other's key cards.

But there are lots of other red flags that your overall pre-flop strategy in 5card is losing big, and the better the players, the more it will lose.


Also what happens when you limp a bad hand EP and 2 tight players Don't! Pick up AAxxx. Mostly nothing good.

Can’t from my phone but I did run in ppt 7,10,and 20% ranges against these hands.

I guess I am running way above ev over a large sample for several years then. Because my results don’t indicate my strategy is losing big at all…quite the opposite so far. Or my opponents play way worse than me so my deviations from optimal don’t cost me as much.

Also, I hope no one lets my posts here dictate their perception of my overall strategy, because they probably give a very inaccurate picture of what I am doing at the tables day in and day out. This forum is for swapping ideas that may not always be best, putting ourselves out there with our experiments.

If we could keep the discussion to whether this whole going low concept is profitable, rather than whether my overall strategy wins (which is does), that would be much appreciated.

Ok to be super clear then.

Playing low-orientated hands from EP in 5-card is largely SPEW, and to the extent you want to find a small portion of low-oriented hands to play from EP, i strongly prefer raise.

It's good that you can recognize that you might be running over EV or maybe that you are in a super juicy game, and not getting punished as hard as someone normally would for Basic strategic mistakes.

Post still matters way more than pre, but there is a correlation between the two.

Another problem with low-orientated hands is that they still get dominated by better rundowns and mid pairs.

Competent players don't play face up. And when someone starts mixing hands like aaxxx, non-pair aa-xxx and wide coverage run downs like tt987ds pre-flop (which they should!), all the sudden every 77 or lower pair is getting completely destroyed, and the implied odds don't make up for it.

I’m talking raw preflop all in equity, not postflop playability, when there are multiple all ins ahead of us from players very likely blocking each other and we are estimating the card distribution of the remaining cards in the deck. The comments you make about postflop and implied odds are sorta besides the point.

Sorry Dumbo, i'm in a combative mood today but you are also tripping.

Equities run close in 5 card. 76544ds is an equity dog vs any random hand.

3w vs 2 top 10% hands it is still last place. Basically, its almost impossible to correctly identify situations where you are getting it in as a pre-flop equity favorite unless you know 2 other players have exactly the same big pair. Which is still useful to a limited extent.

To be more specific 9 handed, 2 players will be dealt aa at the same time about 1.3 times in 100 hands, which might translate to once every 4 or 5 hours on average in a live session.

I just ran about 10 sims with 76544ds against top 10-20% hands, and sometimes other random hands for reference. I post from phone so I can't copy them easily.

Knowing only 1 player has AAxxx in a 3w pot does not make your hand automatically profitable, even if the 2nd player is playing a respectable range, and i simmed that too.

I am willing to be proved wrong.

*simulating 4w+ pre-flop equity with manual ranges is really impractical so i avoided that, it takes both good tools and assumptions to do so that in a convincing way

My sims ran the hands against 3 other opponents, not 2, using 7/10/20% ranges. I thought these ranges loosely approximated the sorta of hands we might expect to see from tight abc players getting it in preflop.

Maybe that explains the differing outputs. When you add the third player with high card distribution it probably decreases the equity of all the high card hands significantly.

The fact that 76544 may be a dog to a random hand does not change the fact that it may be pushing a slight edge preflop against multiple holdings with high cards.

This argument may simply be academic because the equity edge is so slight and the situation will come up relatively infrequently that it probably won’t make a big difference in long-term winrates.

But I still think it’s worth giving a try if you think all your opponents will go on tilt if you scoop with this sort of hand and make the game much better as a result. (Assuming you yourself won’t tilt if you lose.)

I think I am done responding to your posts for a while, maybe permanently.

You shouldn't write non-specific and incomplete OPs and then also argue with high-value community members because we can't read your mind. Throwing in random celebrity quotes doesn't fix that.

The first hand you posted OP doesn't give any indication 4 players will be all-in pre-flop, the player behind you raised, there is NO reason to believe the initial raiser has a suitable hand to stack off against 3 other players assuming you call.

If 3 players are all in the 4th player should fold most of his hands besides aaxxx and hands with excellent board coverage. NOT call with every random top 10-20% hands.

87ss is often an equity favorite against 4+ all in players with tight ranges in hold em, but that doesn't mean you should limp-call against 2 all-ins and hope more player keep calling the all-in behind you to give you the right odds.

IF you are going to ask about pre-flop strategy with 4+ players all-in you need to be EXTREMELY specific for quality feedback. Your examples Don't cut it. And i specifically mentioned how difficult it is to realistically simulate equities with that many players in an earlier post.

Also when i said "your strategy" is losing, i meant the strategy you wrote in OP, it wasn't a personal attack. Which should have been relatively obvious.

Moni, I appreciate your high-value advice in these forums as much as the next but I also enjoy a good discussion. I hope you were not insulted that I simply provided a viewpoint that differs from your own. I think it's fair to say that players can have differing strategies from time to time and still win big. Different game environments provide for different opportunities.

I am unable to copy the output from ppt right now for some reason...if someone knows how please let me know, but against 5/10/15% ranges we have even more equity with 27% four ways. You can verify this yourself in ppt as well.

And thank you for clarifying that your post about the many red flags in my overall preflop strategy was not a personal attack, it wasn't clear to me the way it was written.

Good discussion can only come about if you're clear and people have the details to give a good response. I've mentioned a few times in the past how frustrating your OPs are and have stopped responding to them for a long time now. Just add details so people don't have to ask later. It's beneficial to you, you know.

I’ve been working on that but I don’t see what was particularly unclear about my post this time. I said multiple players were all in and we were up against three other players in the first example.

Maybe the EV difference is between three and four players and we figured that out as a group here since Moni’s sim was three ways.

So +EV four ways but not three ways.

As monikrazy has pointed out, it is worse to have purely low cards in 5 card than in 4 card.

On the other hand, those hands are a smaller fraction of total hands, if you count the combos. You'll see them much less often.

If you want to put low stuff in your 5card range situationally for whatever reason, your results will be better if you focus on hands with a suited Ace and 4 low cards, rather than all-low hands.

You don't need to play 76544 type stuff to get the effect of being able to smash low boards.

Why do you think they are worse in 5 card?

Lots of 5 card talk here .. can't help you there.

But I've been playing 'the whole deck' in both NL and PLO for a very long time and I can definitely tell you that it works out much better in PLO .. lol!

They are used differently though. In NL you have to establish (and be recognized by the V) to have a wide range and then also have V who will fold when you attack a Board that doesn't hit 'their' part of the deck. Yes, it's basic range v range stuff, but in today's NL world it's getting much harder to get folds even after establishing that you are a wide (bad) Player.

In PLO your image is looking to produce folds when IP, but you are also looking to stack V provided your equity improves on the Flop and stacks were deep enough to be in that spot in the first place.

It's amazing to me the number of NL Players who don't understand the equities of calling a Flop or Turn bet in PLO. I'm not even going to call it a Float, it's just an equity based decision. If you can't bail after you miss, then you can't play these holdings.

I had a Player so mad at me because I won runner-runner in a hand .. I then showed him that going to the Turn I needed any card that was a club or heart or non-pairing card from 3 to Jack to improve my equity (that's 32 cards) so I could make a River decision. Obv the Turn came in and I had established enough equity to see the River.

These spots aren't as friendly when HU, but against the right passive opponents you can pick up a lot of pots when IP and/or Donking Turns/Rivers when the PFR just has to slow down because of the Board.

While it doesn't matter when you're in GII mode, you do need to shown down enough of 'the whole deck' in order to produce those 'steal' folds. GL