Annie Duke

Professional Poker Player
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Previous Articles


• Big Hands in Multi-Way Pots on Untextured Boards
• Balancing Energy Levels
• Advanced Post Flop Strategy
• Pot Odds don't exist in a vaccum
• Skill vs. Luck in Poker
• Let's Talk Position
• Post Flop Betting Theory
• The Pot Gets Split, Boys…Don't Forget It.
• Heads Up PLO
• Pot Limit Omaha Rebuys
• How to Get Started on the Road to Big Tournament Poker
• Sunk Cost
• Playing Big Hands out of Position after the Flop in Heads Up PLO
• IS THERE REALLY ANY LUCK IN POKER?
• Bluffing
• How to control the action in PLO
• I'm Training for the World Series of Poker!
• What Does Tilting Really Mean?
• The Chris Dudley Juvenile Diabetes Charity Poker Night - 2006
• Why to play Tight Up Front!
• My Thoughts on Competitiveness
• Stop Moaning and Start Thinking
• Book Available For Purchase!
• Snippet from How I Raised, Folded, Bluffed, Flirted, Cursed and Won Millions
• Chip Value
• Lessons From the FBI
• What a Month May Has Been
• Playing the Maniac
• The Tournament of Champions
• Out of Focus
• God Bless Men
• First Big Bellagio Win (long)
• Fun With HBO
• Omaha Eight-or-Better: Overestimating the Value of Connecting Low Cards
• Omaha Eight-or-Better: Overestimating the Value of AA
• Omaha Eight-or-Better: Overestimating the Value of A2
• Omaha Eight-or-Better: Overestimating the Value of Baby Pairs
• Omaha Eight-or-Better: Playing Stranded Big Pairs
• Q & A With Annie Duke
• Movin' on Up
• The 30-bet Rule
• Omaha Eight-or-Better: Underestimating the Value of Connecting High Cards

Big Hands in Multi-Way Pots on Untextured Boards

Ok…so we have covered what to do in a heads up pot when you flop a monster on a nonthreatening board.  We covered this for both in position and out of position.  So now let's add more people to the pot and look at what to do with these hands in multiway pots. And let's start with you in position on the field.   

So, going back to the situation we have been covering, you have A9 or 99 and the board comes A93 no suits.  You are in position on a four way pot.  Obviously your goal is to extract the most money out of this hand, to make the biggest pot here.  Let's see how you deal with this situation in terms of that goal.   

1)    You are the preflop raiser   

If you were the raiser preflop and everyone checks to you then go ahead and bet the hand, but bet small, around half the pot.  You will be making a lot of continuation bets anyway and you don't want to just check here.  First, it will make everyone suspicious of your hand if you check and you don't want to send up any red flags.  Second, most of the time you bet here you will not have much so you must bet when you have flopped the joint or people will be able to come after your other bets to easily when they know you check your real monsters.     

Not only that but if you check you may be missing out on picking up a big check raise.  Look at how the hand does against someone who has a piece of the flop and someone who has nothing.  Against the air you are likely to be getting no more money.  But if air does decide to take a bluff here, he will have to execute it with a check raise.  That check raise is going to cost a lot.  Let's say the pot is $1K and you bet $500.  Now the bluff is going to cost somewhere in the vicinity of $2K.  If you check and the air decides to bluff by leading the turn, they will bet around $500 themselves.  That means that the check raise bluff earns you 4 times as much as the lead out bluff.  So even though a check is more likely to induce a bluff on the turn, that bluff would have to happen 4 times as often as the check raise bluff just to break even on the check.  Plus you are missing out on the equity of disguising your continuation bets. 

But, it gets worse when you consider what happens against a hand like AK or AQ.  Even if we assume that the lead out bluff on the turn will happen 4 times as often as the check raise bluff so that the choice between betting and checking to the nothing hand is break even, you lose a ton against a real hand.  If your opponent has a hand like AQ and you check the flop, they will lead out $500 or so on the turn.  You will now raise them and they now have an opportunity to fold.  They can fold AQ or AK because you have played the hand like a total monster, checking and allowing a free card off in a multi-way pot.  You have told the story of a huge hand, which is exactly what you want to avoid in this spot.  By getting greedy and trappy with the check you are accomplishing the opposite of what you think you are accomplishing. You are alerting everyone that you might be holding the nuts.   

Now, if you just go ahead and bet the flop it is very hard for the AQ or AK to put you on anything because the bet looks like a standard continuation bet.  Now AQ or AK is likely to go ahead and check raise you to protect their one pair in the multi-way situation.  And that check raise is going to cost $2K or so.  That is 4 times as much as letting them just lead out the turn and then get off the hand. Now, when they check raise you will generally just move in if they look pot committed.  If you flat call it is still hard to get more money out of them because the board is so rough it is difficult for AQ to continue.  But you still got 4 times as much money out of them with the small bet on the flop.   

If the AQ just check calls you still make more money.  When they check call you pick up the $500 call (which is the same you pick up when you check and they lead the turn) but now they are going to either lead for at least $1K on the turn or go for the check raise themselves on the turn.  So either way, whether they attempt the check raise on the flop or they check call and lead or check raise the turn, you make much more money from an opponent who has caught a piece of the board when you just go ahead and make the small bet when everyone checks to you on the flop.   

Now, what if you are the pre-flop raiser and someone leads into you?  Let's first say someone has led out and it is now just you and him.  This could happen if the first or second position player bets and then the players in between you fold.  Or it could happen if the first two players have checked and the player directly to your right bets.  In either case, a flat call is justified.  The reason for this is that when a player bets into the pre-flop raiser, particularly on a board that is so dry, it generally signals a weak hand.  In fact, the play is called a "weak lead."  The most likely hand that the player is holding in this spot is a bad Ace.  Of course, the later the position of the better, the more likely it is a straight out bluff.  But in either case you know you are looking at a weak hand so a raise will just lose your action.  The bettor will surely fold his weak holding.  Not only that, but raising will raise out any players who have checked their action.  You definitely want to give those players at least a chance to call if not to raise so flat calling has to be the preferable play.  Hopefully you are against a player who is willing to take a second barrel at the pot and you can pick up some extra money on the turn.   

The key to the flat call here is that the board does not put you in peril if you give off a free card.  The board texture is so dry, the cards so unrelated to each other, that the free card here is very unlikely to present you with any danger.  Add to that that the player has already charged himself for the few outs he might be holding with the initial bet and the flat call looks very safe and much more profitable here.    Now, what if another player leads into you and a player or two calls in between?  When a player bets out and at least one other player calls you should generally raise.  The reason is that the overcall is already giving away the strength of your hand because the board is so dry.  This is an extremely important concept in interpreting action in multi-way pots.  When people pile on calling in a multi-way pot when the board is dry their hands tend to be quite strong.  So, the mere fact that you are overcalling one or two players is already signaling strength. The message you send with the call is clear, "I am strong."   

In contrast, the raise here actually sends a mixed message. You could be strong but you could also be squeezing.  The squeeze play is a common play in no limit and pot limit poker in which you leverage the position of the players in the pot to bluff.  The idea is that when a player leads out and another player calls that the player who flat calls is often not terribly strong.  What this means is that a raise can be quite powerful here.  You are raising two players, which usually signals strength.  But, more importantly, you are squeezing the initial bettor out of the pot because that bettor has to worry about what the player behind him is holding.  That means the initial bettor can only continue to play with the strongest of holdings because he has to worry about both you and the player who called him in the first place.  That means there is a very high probability he will fold.  The second player in the pot has a likelihood of being weak anyway so he is likely to fold.  This play is used preflop quite often but is also used after the flop as well.   

What does this all mean for your raise?  I mean you are not actually squeezing here since you have the best hand.  But you can leverage the squeeze to your advantage.  If both players are weak then the flat call isn't going to get any more money out of them anyway.  So a raise is six of one half a dozen of the other.  But if one of the two players has a significant part of the board then the raise will be more profitable.  This is because the raise might be perceived as a squeeze which will cause a hand like AK to overplay against you.  In general, fast play on the flop is perceived to be weaker than play which occurs on the turn so by playing the hand fast on the flop your play is more likely to be interpreted as weak by a hand like AQ or AK and you will then trap them for much more money because the squeeze is an easy interpretation of the raise.     

If you choose the overcall on the flop you are alerting AK or AQ that it is very likely they should play with caution on subsequent streets because they can't come up with a lot of hands you could be flat calling with on a board that has no draws on it.  Therefore, they will conclude that you must be slow playing a monster.  So, the fast play on the flop will be interpreted as the weaker hand which is exactly the story you are trying to tell. So go ahead and don't be tricky.  Just raise!   

2)    Another player is the preflop raiser   

Basically, when another player is the preflop raiser the play will be the same in a multiway pot.  If everyone checks to you, you can go ahead and bet because people rarely pass the button when the field all checks.  The play is very likely to be interpreted as a bluff so you are likely to get played back at.  And even if you don't, that is fine since you will be taking those same bets with nothing very often so you must bet your hands in that situation as well to be executing solid game theory.     

Now, if a player bets into you then play will proceed the same as if you were the preflop raiser.  If a player bets and there are no callers in between you and the bettor go ahead and flat call as in the case above.  If there are callers in between you and the bettor, go ahead and raise for the same reasons as above.  In fact, the raise is even better in this case because the original better is more likely to be strong.  In the case where you were the preflop raiser, the original bettor is weak leading.  Here, the original raiser is leading into the field so is more likely to have a real hand which makes the raise even more profitable since you are more likely to trap someone for a lot of chips.   

They key in all the situations is in understanding the story you are telling your opponents.  In this case, you are looking to tell a weaker story than what the reality actually is.  The interesting thing is that in multi-way pots,  it is often the case that the stronger play will tell the weaker story.   

Next time we will cover how to play these hands out of position in multi-way pots.