Introduction to Small Stakes No-Limit Hold ’em: Help Them Give You Their Money

All due respect Mason. My experience in multi way pots where everyone is calling down to the river hoping to catch is that you are no longer a favorite to win even when starting out with the best hand, pre flop and after the flop. Too many players looking for an out and you become an underdog. Better to bet some of them off their hands pre flop imo. I rarely played any lower than 10-20 LHE but on occasion I did play 4-8 and 6-12 games with a Kill, making the next hand either 8-16 or 12-24. Those were wild games with most all pots multi way. Many pots were well into the hundreds and some exceeded $500. The funny thing to me, was that often the winner of one of these pots would throw $5 or even $10 to the dealer, a bigger tip then we give in most 15-30 or 20-40 LHE games. This after the pot had been raked for maybe twenty bucks (I watched them do it!). Second funny thing is that most of these low limit players are not even paying attention to the rake! I know you know that too.

That said, I did make money in those games, playing very carefully, and getting out if I did not hit the flop good (set or nut flush draw, like that). Two pair on the flop is sketchy in games like that, with a co-ordinated board. Let me win a couple of good pots and I would take my little score to the door. I knew that hanging around could swiftly cut into my winnings. Yes, you could call that hit and run, but it worked quite often.

They used to have a juicy 8-16 Omaha High game at the Orleans, don't know if it's still there, but the pots got huge in that game, with four or five players going all the way. For a few years I played occasionally at Hollywood Park and the Hustler in the 2-5 NL games. Can't remember when I ever lost, maybe broke about even a few times. True that! I don't get out much anymore but I did okay for a mid level rec player. I'm kicking back these days collecting rent money, so life is good.

One main issue with multi-way pots is your overall fold to cbet stat goes way down. This costs you a lot of money, plus your equity goes down, and it’s way harder to win the hand preflop or on the flop.

Without seeing the math, I’d say you guys made this one up and are woefully wrong. Like I said tho I’ll buy the book and go through it with a red pen

What's the point of hit and running in limit? I understand why people do it in big bet games but it seems silly in limit.

Cause people are silly

Think about it

I think the rake difference is pretty minor and offset by being less likely to take down hands preflop.

Not having the ability to bluff as frequently is not a positive or negative attribute, it's just an attribute of multiway that generally benefits the average bad player more often, as it helps passive players play correctly.

As far as it being more profitable multiway, I don't think this is necessarily true, because multiway your range advantage is doing less work for you since you're less likely to be good with 1 pair and dominate overly wide players.

This is nonsense.

Paraphrasing Galfond: "Your goal is to make money not win pots". Things like fold to cbet are descriptive, not prescriptive, and the values only make sense within a specified context. If I've playing in a game where everyone sees the flop except me and I get to play optimal (for this game) preflop then when I do see the flop I will be folding a lot and c-betting very infrequently. These are clear adjustments. I will also make a lot of money since my opponents are playing so bad and pots will be very large when I do win a pot.

You don't need to win more hands to win more money.

I haven't read this book, and probably won't as I'm not playing these games, and I have no dog in this fight, but this is gibberish.

You get way more folds from Cbets the less players there are in Single raised pots. I don’t know about 3/4! Pots

Do you agree or disagree?

All other things equal, you get more folds from cbets the less players there are in a single raised pot

Obviously but that doesn't prove your point.

Fish don't understand relative vs absolute value. You also get to play more rivers vs multiple fish in MW pots when equities are 100%/0% which decreases variance and boosts EV.

You should look at winrates (hint they are all negative) of fish street by street to understand why playing in MW pots with them is a superior strategy to getting heads up. This is why limping preflop with the majority of your hands in a game filled with fish is a better strategy than RFing.

Exactly, you just proved yourself wrong.

You are conflating frequency with EV.

But hey DooDoo, his gut tells him this, so no need to analyze this any further. /thread 🙄

haha yeah the classic "I trust my gut." It's not like books have been written about this or anything.

I def could be wrong

Where’s the work that proves the authors contention

You would need to code your own bots to play like fish and then code a bot to play like you and compare the EV of the two strategies after running multiple million hand simulations in the same way Saulo Costa did with his GTO bots.

or

You can trust players that are much better than you

Those are your only two options.

who are they players that are much better than me?

David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth.

Nope

The guys who can't get past low stakes live?

Have you read the book?

Have you lived in vegas for the last 10 years?

I’ll read the book next week

No I can tell by what's posted in this thread I don't need to. As soon as someone starts advocating intentionally putting yourself in multiway spots and checking hands like KK in lose passive games That's all I need to see. Now if it was an aggressive game it's little less horrible as you have a better chance of going for a back raise. In a 1-2 or similar game playing kings the way Sklansky played them you're literally saying I would like to play them in a 4 or 5 way pot.

We don't say this. You'll need to read the book to see exactly what we do say.

Mason

I would not prefer to play them in a 4 or 5 way pot and the book doesn't say anything like that.

This may come off rude but it needs to be said.

You can't trust your own judgement if you are making statements like the one below. You should defer to people who have been experts in the field for almost 50 years.