Sensor de fuerza

This book has focused on hand reading in small stakes hold'em games against amateur players. Thus, many of the examples have featured multiway pots, since most pots in these games start out multiway.

In some ways hand reading is easier in these games than it is in tighter, tougher games. You can make assumptions about your opponents' tendencies which allow you to rule out some holdings in certain key situations.

But hand reading is also tougher in multiway pots than it is in heads-up pots. When you're heads-up, you know your opponent is responding only to you. This simplifies things. In a multiway pot, your opponents are taking into account what other players may do. Here are some basic hand reading principles that apply specifically to multiway pots.

Players will be more inclined to protect vulnerable made hands with raises.

Say you make it $20 to go preflop in a $2-$5 game. Four players call behind you, and the big blind calls. The flop comes J♥T♠7♠. It's a six-way pot for $122. You bet $70. The next player flat-calls.

Small stakes players like to slowplay hands like sets and two pair. But in this circumstance, I would expect almost all nits and regulars to raise with JJ, TT, 77, or JT. I would also expect a raise from T7 and AA-QQ. No one wants to flat call with their set only to see the 9♠ roll off on the turn.

Thus, when I see a player call in this situation—directly after the bettor with two or more players behind on a threatening flop—I discount the really big hands. The only big hand that I would expect players to slowplay regularly would be 98, particularly 9♠8♠.

This is useful information if the action goes like this. The player calls and everyone else folds. The turn is the 2♣. You check, and he bets $120. This is a great situation to checkraise presuming the stacks are deep enough to allow for some fold equity. Since your opponent is marked with a range that generally lacks the strongest hands, you can expect a fold a good portion of the time.

Or if you don't think your opponent will bet if you check, you can plan to bet the turn and shove the river if it's a blank. The money already in the pot combined with the fact that your opponent has limited the strength of his range by his flop call should alert you to a possible bluffing opportunity.

Tip No. 26. In general, be on the lookout for situations where your opponents remove the strongest hands from their ranges by flat calling in situations they would nearly always raise with a monster. These are often good bluffing opportunities.

Players will be less inclined to make speculative calls with players behind.

This is the flipside to the first adjustment. Same hand. If it were a heads-up pot you could expect opponents to call on the J♥T♠7♠ flop with hands like AK, AQ, 87, and so forth. But the player first to act after your bet with two or more players behind will frequently fold these marginal hands rather than call and risk getting raised by someone behind. This principle holds very true for nits, true for regulars, and less true for fish. (Really all hand reading principles hold less true for fish. They play by their own rules, and you often just have to assume you're playing against a wide, weak range and proceed accordingly.)

For example, if a nit called me in this situation, I would expect a hand range consisting of big draws and too-good-to-fold, too-weak-to-raise made hands: nut flush draws, combo draws, top pair plus flush draws, and perhaps AJ. I'd not expect a nit to hold T7 or J7, and I'd expect him to raise any hand JT or better including 98. Nits play out of fear of losing a big pot, so they are generally less inclined than the average player to slowplay a hand that could get outdrawn.

Aggressive players will be more inclined to shove over bets rather than call and allow the hand to continue.

Nits tend to play very cautiously in very multiway pots. They don't slowplay their big hands, and they are very tight with the hands they'll call with. This is basically the right way to play multiway pots. The fact that a nit's strategy aligns well with correct strategy in multiway pots is a big reason that nits do quite well for themselves in small stakes live games (while not doing so well in tighter, tougher online games).

Aggressive players tend to overextend themselves in multiway pots. They are aware they don't want to slowplay big hands. And they're aware that calling with several players behind can get them in trouble. But they don't have the discipline to fold many of the hands and draws that they should be folding. So instead they raise.

They'll raise flush draws. They'll raise straight draws (particularly open-ended ones with overcards). They'll raise top pair, good kicker. They'll raise weak overpairs like 99 on an 866 flop. Many of these are hands they might call with if heads-up. In a multiway pot they know calling is dangerous, but where maybe they should be folding, they'll raise instead.

Players will tighten up their betting standards.

Most players tighten up their betting standards in multiway pots. Players who continuation bet nearly every heads-up flop will instead check when they miss in five-handed pots. Again, this is the correct adjustment to make.

Also, players (particularly aggressive ones) will sometimes make small bets with hands they probably should be checking. For instance, instead of checking a weak top pair in a $120 pot, they'll bet $40. They know that betting is walking into a minefield, but they can't bring themselves to check, so they go for the middle ground. This strategy is actually not bad at all in games where players are loose preflop and tight postflop, as they often are at the small stakes in Las Vegas. In these games, players give these $40 bets nearly the same credit they would give a $100 bet, and therefore the aggressor gets a decent shot to win a big pot with a relatively small outlay.

But in general, if someone bets $120 into a $120 pot on a 6-handed flop, they nearly always mean business, even if they were the preflop raiser and you might normally expect them to continuation bet with a wide range.

Players in late position don't give multiway bets enough credit.

Say someone bets $70 into a $100 pot in a six-handed pot. The first four players fold, and the last player calls. Often this caller has not given the bet enough credit since the pot is no longer multiway. Since they are no longer worried about getting raised by a third player, these last players loosen up again. They forget, however, that the player who bet did so into five other players and therefore likely has quite a strong range.

This is one reason that loose no-limit games are so incredibly lucrative. When you flop a set you can bet into the field and, after getting a few folds, hook someone for a loose call who sees the big pot and a single opponent and mistakenly overestimates his winning chances.