Thanks for all the comments on this week’s What’s Your Play?, and sorry for the lack of response on my end; it proved to be an unexpectedly hectic week.
Important Points About Multiway Pots
I want to start by making two observations about multi-way pots:
1. It is not necessarily exploitable to fold a large portion of your range in a multiway pot. This is because the “burden” of making the bettor indifferent to bluffing does not lie solely with you. In this example, between the two of you, BB and you would need to continue to this bet approximately 66% of the time to make UTG indifferent to betting a pure bluff. Here, because Hero’s range is much stronger than BB’s, more of the burden lies with Hero, and I don’t mean to say that this is an easy fold. However, the analysis isn’t as simple as “Hero is near the top of his range, so folding would be exploitable.”
2. Other players, even reasonably good ones, tend to be more straightforward in multi-way pots. Judging from the comments, I may have made the Villains seem like better players than they probably were. They weren’t superstarts, they just weren’t obviously bad. I suppose that saying now that I think UTG will be more honest than he should be is in fact in direct conflict with my description of “no obviously exploitable tendencies”, but I do think you see a lot of people who play pretty well in heads up pots who will still make mistakes in multiway pots.
Is the BB Strong?
A big complication is that most players, again including seemingly good ones, will have an overly weak range in BB’s seat. Raphael explains why:
at each opportunity to show strength (squeezing preflop or raising flop), BB has chosen the passive action in just calling. It’s important to remember that BB was closing the action both preflop and on the flop. On the flop, BB was getting almost 3.4:1 on a call to see the next card which could potentially improve his equity. For example, on this particular board, BB can have a ton of Ax suited which have at least a gut shot or a pair + gut shot or some sort of back door flush draw that would in fact want to see another card.
Moreover, not all players are comfortable slowplaying in multiway pots when draws are present. So I actually took the BB to be quite weak, and if UTG reads it the same way, then my points above lose a lot of their validity. UTG can indeed bluff more than you’d think, especially if he’s counting on some perceived strength from betting into two people, and a disproportionate amount of the “defending burden” falls on me as a result.
Is UTG Semi-Bluffing?
No one seems to think that UTG is on a pure bluff here, which is good. He’s taken a number of strong actions, raising UTG and then betting into multiple players on the flop and turn. Most commenters are correctly thinking that UTG’s range for putting money into the pot on the turn will consist of some combination of made hands, which with the possible exception of TT have Hero crushed, and semi-bluffs.
The critical point that I didn’t see anyone mention is that UTG may prefer to check his semi-bluffs, looking either to check-raise shove or get a free card. Many players will be reluctant to bet draws here, especially the strongest ones, because it puts them in an awkward spot if raised. There are good reasons why you would like to be the one making the last bet when you have a big draw.
Results
The better UTG seems to be, the more inclined Hero should be to continue here, probably by min-raising as Nate and Mobius Dumpling argue. I may have overrepresented his skill in my original post, because I decided he was going to be strong here more than he “should” be and folded.
Had the stacks been much deeper, I would be more inclined to call because I wouldn’t expect UTG to go for a check-raise with his draws nearly so often.
BB shoved, UTG called, and the river was a heart. BB showed Ah 6h to take the pot with a rivered flush, and UTG showed QQ so that we could all feel sorry for him. The only thing I felt was proud.
Nice analysis. I really liked the discussion of the hand in the earlier post, so will endeavour to take part more often.
This was a really great example of an interesting situation where folding, calling and raising all had merits. For me, it comes to the dynamics at the table. Had their recently been a lot of action? Is there any shred of a tell we can use?
I thought a lot about this post, although I didn’t put down my thoughts in on the other post. The thing is, UTG is very often playing 99-AA this way, and we only beat TT out of that group. The question is, how often is UTG playing other stuff? I’m inclined to make the fold against a “good” live player, sans read.
Andrew, thanks for this great WYP! In particular, this part was really eye-opening:
“UTG may prefer to check his semi-bluffs, looking either to check-raise shove or get a free card. Many players will be reluctant to bet draws here, especially the strongest ones, because it puts them in an awkward spot if raised.”
I totally failed to take this into consideration, and it might have such a huge effect on UTG’s range here that might change all of my thinking on this spot.
Of course, if UTG indeed plays this way then his range for betting the turn is super-exploitable (in the sense that he basically can’t have any bluffs, so we should always be folding). So in many ways, folding JJ here might be a very exploitive play based on UTG’s presumably-unbalanced betting range OTT.
I personally try my best to not play in this exploitable way in UTG’s spot, which might be one of the reasons I misread his range here. I’ll have to look out for this kind of spots in the future, remembering that if someone makes a bet which leaves them with an SPR between 0.3 and 1 out of position on the river, then their range is often stronger than usual, because many players don’t like playing semibluffs or pure bluffs this way, This should be true to a significant extent even in PLO.
Andrew, why flat pre instead of the-bet fold?
Let’s do it this way: you tell me why you think three-betting would be better, and then I’ll tell you why I disagree.
Specifically, Notam, do you think that 3-betting JJ here has significantly higher EV than 3-betting 72o here? Can you specify a somewhat-common scenario where we would get to showdown and win the pot with JJ after 3-bet/folding with it?
Since it’s your blog, I’m happy to do it your way 🙂
With the UTG raise, I put Villain on a fairly tight range; 77+, ATs+, KQs, AQo+, KQo seems reasonable. Tighter 88+, AQ+, KQs also possible. In either case, I’m slightly ahead of UTG’s range. I’m being crushed by pairs over JJ (18 combos), crushing those below JJ (with 88+, it’s also 18 combos), and a small favorite to unpaired hands which represent 36 of 73 combos for the tighter range — let’s say about half.
There are two things I like about a 3 bet here. First, I take the initiative in position. Second, I think I’m getting value on most calls. I’d expect many villains UTG to call 100% of their opening range, save four-bets from KK+, AKs (although, if V 4 bets AKo, I’m folding to a more balanced range than I’d generally expect). I’d also expect BB to fold often, leaving me heads up vs. UTG.
If I flat, I’d expect V to lead his entire range on most flops, and I’m lost. This is what happened in the actual hand, and I frankly was unclear what I was up against. When I 3-bet pre, I’d expect less of this and more checks OTF from the Villain. This provides me the option to either check behind or C-bet. On the flop that came here, I’d C-bet for value, expecting a lot of calls from (some) over-cards and most Ax draws. On a typical high-low-low dry board, I’d probably check behind, but call most turn bets by villain.
With regard to Mobius Dumpling’s question about JJ v 72o here, yes, I think JJ is higher EV, because I’m not intending to try to fold out UTG, but rather get value by raising pre and possibly betting one or two streets depending on the runout.
I guess as I write this, I guess my short answer is I’m expecting most UTG opens to call most of their UTG range, and my 3-bet is getting value. That said, my original question was sincere in that I really am not sure which is better.
Thanks, you did a nice job articulating your thoughts here. Now to pick them apart!
“I take the initiative in position.” This doesn’t mean anything to me until you tell me how it’s going to translate into Hero making money. How will this cause Villain either to fold hands better than Hero’s at some point in the hand or to give action with hands worse than Hero’s? (I’m not saying it necessarily won’t, just that this is what you need to be asking yourself)
You say Hero is only slightly ahead of Villain’s UTG opening range, so that makes it tough to raise for value. If Villain folds the weakest hands he opened (and most will – calling a reasonably sized 3bet out of positon with 100% of your opening range is a pretty big error that I wouldn’t expect this player to make), then Hero is crushed when 4-bet and flipping vs Villian’s calling range.
It seems like part of your argument for 3-betting is “flushing out” Villain’s biggest pairs, but there are a few problems with that. First, as you say, he won’t 4-bet only his biggest pairs, so sometimes 3-betting leads to you folding a hand with a lot of equity in a somewhat large pot. Second, when Villain has AA, I’d rather see the flop cheaply then put a good bit of money in and then fold. Although I’ll probably lose something to AA on a lot of flops, he’ll lose a lot to me when I flop a set. Seeing a flop against AA is not so bad as far as worst case scenarios go, as long as you don’t go crazy just because you have an overpair.
Why is causing BB to fold beneficial? Also, while we’re talking about the other players in the hand, what about the risk of someone behind 4-betting? Again, you’re stuck folding JJ with a good bit of money in the pot.
“I’d expect V to lead his entire range on most flops, and I’m lost.” How are you lost? You know exactly what Villain has: “77+, ATs+, KQs, AQo+, KQo”. You think he’s betting that whole range, and you have 60% equity against it on this flop, so easy call. What’s the problem?
You say you expect a lot of calls from Villain on this flop when you 3-bet and then c-bet, but why would he call with 77? Or KQ? (you mention overcards in addition to Ax draws) By 3-betting pre-flop, you are representing a big pair yourself, so you can’t really expect Villain to give you a lot of action with worse pairs post-flop. Although you’re right that 3-betting pre gives you more information about Villain’s hand (at a high price), it also gives him more information about your hand and will enable him to play better postflop.
But OK, you 3-bet and then bet the flop. Now he raises. Are you not now lost? And in a much larger pot?
Thanks again for the comment. For more on this subject: https://www.thinkingpoker.net/articles/calling-for-information/
This is really helpful. THANKS!!!!
I love Andrew’s reply, but there’s something that he didn’t say which I think is important. A general rule of thumb among good players is to try to always 4-bet or fold OOP. So when you say that “I’m getting value on most calls. I’d expect many villains UTG to call 100% of their opening range” I think you’re just wrong. I think if villain is savvy enough you just can’t 3-bet him in position with a merged range: all you’re doing is turning the bottom of your 3-betting range into a bluff. This is one of those canonical situations that birthed the concept of polarized ranges.
As I said before, if we expect villain to mostly 4-bet or fold, then we might as well have 72o. Also, many good players do have some calling range here in the UTG (especially when somewhat deep), but that doesn’t help you since often this calling range will, effectively, be almost tailored to make JJ suffer: For example, one such range is QQ and some suited connectors: QQ because he can’t bring himself to fold QQ and can’t 4bet it for value, and suited connectors to balance QQ and crack overpairs. Now, note that it will be unpleasant for us to play our hand postflop vs this range, even in position.
Andrew,
would you mind discussing what part stack sizes and position have in your decisions to 3B?
like when would you think to 3b as LMP or CO vs just flatting if you were BTN?
which