In this post, we are going to run over some tips on playing multiway pots. These can be tricky spots to play, we are going to want to protect our hand certain times but not over-play our hand other times, as hand strengths alter completely when we are in a multiway pot.
Play Draws Slower
When we are in multiway pots our equity will be less than if we were in a heads up pot, so we are going to want to play draws more passively as there is more chance of someone having a good hand and calling our bets with more players in the pot. So with less fold equity, look to play draws for the minimum cost, take free cards and never raise.
Play Tight against a Player Betting
Other players will be playing tight too, so if someone comes out betting we will want to be very selective with the hands we continue with, in multiway pots, choose hands that have good ways to improve rather than weak top pairs that could already be in poor shape and have little equity.
Play Even Tighter Against Raises
A bet and a raise in a multiway pot is nearly always a nutted hand, so don’t look to continue in these spots unless you have a monster holding yourself, for instance, I recently had this hand occur in a cash game:
Hero: A♣ Q♣
BB: Q♦ J♦
BTN: 6♣ 6♠
Flop: Q♠ T♦ 6♦
Hero: Bets $2
BB: Calls $2
BTN: Raises $7
Hero: ?
This is just an easy fold for my hand…
I would prefer to have a hand like K♠ J♠ on this board to continue with against this action, with my A♣ Q♣ holding I have top pair top kicker, but I’m always going to be crushed versus this type of action.
It’s not to say that this way a bad play, there are plenty of hands that I’m in good shape against, even the pair and flush draw is not beating me yet, but once the pot is raised by the button it’s almost impossible for them to have a hand that mine is beating or at the very least doesn’t have huge equity against my holding.
Don’t Go Crazy With Just Top Pair
The last hand is a great example of this theory, whilst top pair in a heads up pot is very valuable, it’s value drastically decreases in multiway pots, it’s hard to get more than 1 or 2 streets of value maximum so don’t look to play huge pots and bet all the streets of action with just one pair in a multiway pot, you will hardly ever have the best hand on the River doing this.
Protect Strong Holdings on Wet Boards
Whilst in heads up situations players might look to bet their draws and we can trap by just calling and winning more bets that way in multiway pots we are just going to want to protect our equity when we flop good hands like two pair and better, because there will be many more hands that will have a piece of the board that could call but wouldn’t want to bet.
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