Today’s mailbag question comes from a comment on the What’s Your Plan? Flopped Pair and Draw: Results post. It was a good question that I felt warranted a thorough response.
Q: Though honestly I agree with what you wrote I just wonder since “Villain is a young online MTT wizard: highly ranked on Pocket Fives, tons of success” we know (and he might not know we know) that he knows he can bet anything and probably get a fold tons of the time because he can have AK and it is much harder for other people to (especially when they don’t check raise the flop). As soon as we call I think Villain needs to become super cautious. Against anyone else I insta fold k10. I actually thought this example was how to outplay a wizard but I was wrong. : -) I guess I leveled myself!
A: If I understand you correctly, you’re asking whether Villain couldn’t bluff this flop with a really wide range since he can represent nutted hands (not only AK but sets as well) more easily than we can. This would be more of a consideration in a heads up pot.
The nice thing about multiway pots is that they provide an opportunity to get free information from opponents who are otherwise very good at balancing their ranges and concealing information. This is because your opponent cannot play only against you. If you know what he thinks about other players in the pot, then that provides a framework for interpreting his actions.
In this instance, we’ve already said that the other two players in the pot were on the loose side. It’s safe to assume that a smart player will pick up on that quickly. Even if Villain knew that Hero would fold a hand like KT, he still can’t assume that the other two would. Loose players, by definition, don’t make tight folds based on sharp reads. On such a coordinated board, Villain must assume that he’s going to get action more often than not. Thus, we can treat his bet as honest and fold without going down the path of “but he knows that I know that he….”
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Andrew, thank you for writing this. I often find HU much more difficult than multi-way pots, precisely because in multi-way pots there is usually so much more information available vis-a-vi the other players and their actions.
Example from a loose $1-2 game I was in recently:
Tricky player raises to $7 UTG. two loose player call, I call with 22, and the BB calls.
Flop:
2d6s8s
Original raiser bets $15, two calls, and I raise to $60 (230 behind). BB calls and the original raiser shoves for $320. Two folds and it is back to me.
Given all the information, I figure that my bottom set is no good, and fold. The BB calls with 9s10s and the original better shows a set of 8s.
Had this been a heads-up hand, I don’t think I could have folded, but the multi-pot action gave me enough information to correctly throw away the hand.