Multi-way pots in poker: How to play on high flops

In the BBZ Blog’s brief history so far we’ve touched on some of the trickiest situations in tournament poker, from playing the small blind to bluffing the river.

In this article, we’re focusing on how to approach multi-way pots, i.e. pots in which you face more than one opponent.

The more players you’re facing, the more aspects you need to consider. What’s their position at the table? What’s their stack size? How does the board interact with their ranges? etc.

In the first instalment of our multi-way pots series, we looked at how you can tackle low flops in three-way pots using hand examples from the man himself, Jordan “bigbluffzinc” Drummond, a.k.a. BBZ.

This time, BBZ is back and looking at high flops, in this case, a particularly wet and scary-looking flop with both flush draws and straight draws available.

THE HAND

The blinds are 700/1,400 and BBZ opens to 3,080 (2.2x) from the cutoff with q♠9♣ and gets called by the button and the big blind.

The flop comes k♥j♦q♦ and the big blind will usually check their entire range, just as they did in our low flops article.

Things get interesting in BBZ’s position. Here’s a look at how his range should approach this flop:

Every single hand in the range checks. Even sets and flopped straights.

Over to the in-position player on the button, their range is expected to bet 80% of the time. Here’s a look:

In this instance, that’s exactly what happened. The button led for 3,175 (roughly 28% of the pot).

Next to act is the big blind. “The board is just so threatening, it’s too miserable to call all the time,” says BBZ. “Even if you have 109 you should call, but it’s still like, can I really just call?”

The EV of raising with hands like A10 and 109 for the big blind is very high, but in reality, the big blind is raising very few hands. K10-suited (top pair and open-ender) and some KQ-off combos (top two pair) are among them.

One thing that surprises BBZ is that the big blind is mixing between folding and calling with Q10. “Holy shit. I would never fold Q-10,” says BBZ. “This is against a roughly 30% pot-size bet.”

The big blind did indeed get out of the way and now it’s over to BBZ with his second pair and gutshot straight draw. “I don’t like folding here if that’s worth anything,” says BBZ. “But it’s a pretty miserable spot. It seems like my outs are duplicated a lot.”

The main reason BBZ feels forced to fold is that it’s difficult to define the button’s range in terms of air. “Sure, we’ll have suits and interaction sometimes, but then both other players also have lots of that, so that makes it more difficult for the in-position player to bluff.

“This player can bluff without having very +EV checks,” he continues. “This player could have pocket sevens, pocket deuces would be the most extreme example, A5-suited, 67-suited etc, but those hands don’t show up enough.

“This player should construct their betting range so it’s massively overweighted with value. It’s just so hard to bluff, which makes it hard for my hand to call, I think. We don’t have to do anything superheroic.”

In the hand, BBZ folded.

But should he have?

Let’s take a look at his range now when faced with the flop bet:

“q♠9♣ is a pure VPIP (ie call)” says BBZ. “I fucked up.”

A queen with no backdoor flush draw is a pure fold, but the gutshot is enough for BBZ’s q♠9♣ to be a call.

What if the big blind had called though?

Let’s see how that would have changed things:

With the pot still multi-way, BBZ’s q♠9♣ is now a pure fold. His opponent’s ranges are too strong and the gutshot no longer means much.

However, for his overall range, he’s doing more squeezing than he is calling.

“Squeezing is so good in these multiway pots,” says BBZ. “That being said, qj-suited is a pure call, and q10-suited is almost always calling.”

King-x with no flush draw is now a pure fold when it goes bet-call, and you’ll notice pocket aces are always squeezing in this spot, but it’s not something BBZ would enjoy. “I would feel so miserable,” he says.

These kinds of flops can be both exciting and difficult to navigate. Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of how your range should approach them the next time you face one.

This is just one of the many multi-way flops that BBZ solves in his BBZ Bundle. Jam-packed with 20 hours of the highest quality, best-value training content available, check it out today.