Mastering The Fundamentals: Multiway Pots

Continuing our Mastering The Fundamentals series, Jonathan covers how your poker strategy should change when multiple people are involved in a hand; learn how to master multiway pots to crush your opponents!

In most low stakes poker games you will find that the majority of pots will have multiple players involved. These multiway pots can be tricky to navigate and lots of players make huge mistakes by playing too many hands and finding themselves dominated when all of the chips end up in the middle!

As more players enter the pot, you must proceed with caution. Offsuit hands are especially terrible multi-way because you are somewhat likely to be dominated. Marginal suited hands also lose a lot of value. Your 3-betting range should become tighter and more linear.

Jonathan looks at the differences in the ranges preflop when facing a single open and then when facing a caller in between you and the opener. Your range should tighten! He also looks at the differences in the range of poker hands that decide to 3-bet rather than just call when facing a raise and a caller.

It is important to learn some of these important postflop multi-way concepts.
The nut & range advantage are both greatly reduced as more ranges are in the pot. Because they are reduced, the strategies that come with a large range and/or nut advantages are also greatly reduced. This means that very high frequency bets no longer occur as well as huge bet sizes. Some general adjustments that you should make are defending significantly tighter when facing aggression in multi-way pots. You should be over-folding when you are not closing the action due to equity realization factors.

Hand strength will typically downgrade in multiway pots. Continuing ranges should be much tighter so you need more equity to put money in the pot. Cleaning up equity has more merit in multiway pots. Some general adjustments that you should make are constructing your bets in a more linear manner. Make sure you are using fewer ‘no equity’ bluffs and more hands that need protection in your betting range.

When you have the option to use aggression you should check far more frequently, you should use smaller bet sizes on average and you should construct your bets/raise in a more linear manner. When you are facing aggression you should defend significantly tighter. You should over-fold your shared minimum defense frequency when you’re not closing the action.

0:00 - Mastering Multiway Fundamentals
0:37 - Preflop: Fundamentals
2:03 - Preflop: Hand Chart Examples
12:43 - Postflop: Nut & Range Advantage
14:52 - Postflop: Minimum Defense Frequency & Equity Realization
18:16 - Postflop: Aggression
18:48 - Postflop: Poker Hand Examples
34:45 - Mastering Multiway Fundamentals

On this Poker Coaching channel we cover a weekly poker topic to help improve your poker strategy!

In order to take your poker game to the next level it is vitally important you learn all the nuances of the game.

Do you know what ranges of poker hands you should be playing from each position? When should you 3-bet, call or fold? When is the right time to make a hero call or a huge bluff? Do you know how to play preflop, flop, turn & river effectively and how should your poker strategy change depending on the street? What difference does it make if you are playing multi-way vs heads-up?

#pokerstrategy #multiway #pokeradvice

[PokerCoaching]

Why should we use smaller bet sizes in multiway pots? 🤔

[anthonyrojas]

This is so relevant to these fish ponds in low-stakes. Awesome content Jonathan, thank you as always

[volodymyrbelozorov]

"You have to proceed with caution!"
(Jams every 2nd hand)

[dherbert]

One of my most favourite videos by Jonathon .
Clear and easy to understand .
Think it’s so important to realise that when you get called sometimes and bust, that doesn’t mean you played it badly . Thanks again .

[genisbartusiak]

One of my favorite videos you have posted. I love when you have examples

[josephh]

last week was my first time playing in 7 yrs, went up against 40 in a small afternoon tourny, i came in 8th on the bubble, just missing my first cash. So i went back and listened to Jonathans audio book, "master the small stacks game" and now i realize how many mistakes i made. With the knowledge gained from your book. im just a small stakes player, and i plan to dominate the small stacks games. Jonathan im excited to finally play this game smart and win these tournaments, especially the cash games. You are the best.

[jamesjones]

Thank you. You have triggered a thought process on one of your very insightful points that has me rethinking a specific scenario.

[MauiQ]

Love that you inform very directly to the audience: air-ball betting is no good! Towards the end of video: Q7❤goes all-in (Air-ball bet, we have a blocker potential and position) “Oh no…such is life! (Aggressive loss then conceded-lmao) Did they have Top pair (6)? GREAT REVIEW WITH YOU as always Jonathan!

[spencerlee]

I feel like multi way pots is a leak in my game. Thank you JL for this helpful video! Keep them coming 😊

[rodneybaglama]

Your a awesome poker teacher I've excelled my game watching your free videos

[ewallt]

Very happy to hear all in for the Kings one.

[BedifferentDan]

Nice video! Videos regarding Multiway pot in deep cash game could be interesting. Thanks

[joshharrison]

Thank you for using these stack sizes!! Perfect

[mrnobody]

Love the information but a little confused. One of the first post flop strategies you mention for multi-way pots is far less continuation betting but you continuation bet like 90% of your examples. And even ones you checked you ended up check raising.

[eugeneahmad]

I been waiting for this bc at lower stakes, there are alot of multi way pots.... everyone calls to see the flop

[blazeron]

Squeeze pre with the off suit broadway to avoid multiway spots and I also 3 bet with my suited wheel aces as bluffs to get it heads up where a cbet will take it down a large majority of the time.

[backpacker]

Preflop, even AA chance of winning drops precipitously the more people are in the pot - by the time you hit 3 callers, you're almost down to a coin flip, 4 callers and you're below even odds. And although you are best in and getting much better odds than you need (so of course you are going to play) that's the reason you should be aggressive on the front end to whittle down the field and improve your chances - but careful on the back end with so many still in. AA is still just one pair.
But I bring it up mainly to illustrate just how much your equity drops multiway and how much stronger you need to be to proceed post.
Personally, I'd much rather play medium pairs and suited connectors with more than 2 opponents, because I'm looking for sets and better to push the pot. Premium hole cards, I'm looking to narrow the field if I can. Kind of the whole point of 3 betting, really - chase out the weaker stuff.

[mjly]

And here's an interesting exercise I've been doing: Take a deck of cards. Give yourself a starting hand in your range. Just turn over cards until two of them line up in your range. Shuffle the rest. Deal out 4 hands face down. (Yes, I see a LOT of 4-way and often more in my casino.) Deal the flop. Look at the board and decide what you would normally do. Now, turn over the other hands. You will be shocked at how many times you're beat. It's just a good exercise to validate what Jonathon is talking about here. Yeah, you'll see a lot of hands that normally fold pre-flop, but the point is to show how multi-way really degrades your hand.

[ohiomoon]

Personally, I prefer longer videos so don't feel bad about making something 45 minutes or even longer. Your videos are very instructional and you're a very good teacher. At least for me that is.

[harpuajim]

Great video. Are your range charts available to download?