1/2: Small cbets multi-way are costing me the pot

lol you still included the results.

You need to include the stack sizes in your post. No one is going to be able to give you any decent advice in any hand without this info.

The small cbet was not your problem in this hand. Your turn bet sizing is really bad. You bet 1/3 pot on a double flush draw board on a blank? You should be betting close to full pot here. Again, need to know stack sizes.

Fold pre, you have a reverse implied odds hand oop. Its a super weak hand in utg, I rather play 67s than kqo in utg

Unless theres a huge fish that plays face up.

Check flop is possible

Check turn is also possible or size up.

Getting it multiway you want 2pairs/sets or better not tpgk hence fold pre.

Tp only good headsup or vs fish.

So either fold pre or raise big to like 25 to narrow the field.

Also when you're playing vs fishes you want them in the pot. They going to call bigger bets anyway. When you get outdrawn its poker. When you're in multiway pots, AA gets cracked all the time. You act like it's the cbets size fault. Purpose of betting smaller is because ppl will smash flops every now and especially multiway. Most ppl folds unless they hit a piece. If they're passive fishes by all means size up to like pot or overbet.

Understand the logic behind your moves instead of using it and then say it's bad. Just stop using it if it doesn't suit your taste. Maybe they're all fishes that needs to learn a lesson so valuetown them to death with pot size bets

Seems like really small bets preflop, flop, and turn. If the standard open is to 10 without the straddle, you maybe can't go to 25, but a 3x open is really small at low stakes.

With 60xBB, you could bet larger everywhere and shove the turn, but could be results oriented. With 2 2-flushes, you could even shove the turn as played. You could be doing that with a draw as well as a made hand.

Agree small cbets multiway may be some theory, but doesn't work at low stakes where everyone might call the cbet. If you had missed the flop, then you would just be throwing away the 25 by cbetting. Not sure where this theory comes from. Solvers don't work well 5-ways.

You included the results in the title and saying you lost the hand, which might bias responses, including mine.

This is still including results. Just because you didn't specify how, doesn't mean it won't bias advice.

If you are including a hand as an example, you can include results with it, but if you are posting a hand you want feedback on, no results, including hero's last action.

That said, I tend to agree that small c-bets suck multi-way. I'd usually check or bet bigger.

Grunch:

PRE - depending on the effective stack size, I wonder if you could raise larger. I'd think $20 gets this less multi-way and a little easier to play post flop.

FLOP - theory does say you should bet small here, for good reason. The larger you go, the more likely it becomes that you're only getting called by better and just value-owning yourself.

That said, you could probably get away with some larger bets when you're OOP, if you're not c-betting too frequently from OOP, and you're able to hand-read effectively, such that you can navigate later streets well enough to avoid getting owned. You'll likely have to take some bet-check-bet or bet-bet-check lines.

TURN - I think this is where you need to reconsider your action. I think a better line here would be to either check to let someone stab at it, or over-bet. Your $60 bet into $175 is laying almost 4:1 on a call, which is going to keep in all their NFD's and combo draws.

If you check and someone bets small, you can check raise. If someone bets large, you can play your hand as a bluff catcher and check call.

RIVER - the 5h on the river is one of the worst possible cards. It completes two straights and a flush. If you're going to drag opponents to the river with so many hands in their range, you will need to call down more, but you can still fold some, and this is probably one of the run outs that you'd want to fold, because we really don't beat anything that gets here this way and wants to bet.

Conclusion - your small flop bet isn't the problem. Your small turn bet and river call are the problem.

The logic isn't the same on the turn. Once we bet small on the flop, and no one raises, they've capped their ranges, and we need to either size up on brick turns, size down when the nuts change, or check when we think someone will stab and we'd like to raise.

Interesting discussion
It’s hard to play any hand OOP
KQo is bottom of range, I’d just call the straddle. Position might be more important to me than it is to you.

The biggest problem with ‘solver suggestions’ is that they expect folds that we don’t get. Average players think you have nothing with a small bet, so they take a flop. There’s no way a $15 open in ‘solver world’ would get 4 callers, but that’s ‘our world’.

The bloat the pot mirage is foolish, because we are trying to define where we are at ‘before’ the ‘big money’ goes in on the turn & river. Solvers expect 3bets we don’t see with a big bet & strong post-flop play. We bet pot, reduce the field, increase the dead money and get credited with strength.

So, a simple fix is to simply mix in some pot-sized cBets. I know this is bigger than what you came up with, but I think it’s easier & more effective. There’s still a place for small bets multiway, but if you sprinkle in some pot sized bets, in position, I think you’ll like the results.

Expanding on my posts above while I have a little more time...

When we're the PFR, consider how the configuration (each player's position) relates to the ranges each player may have.

When we open for a raise first to act in a straddled pot, we should probably give opponents credit for some stronger hands when they call, because we're raising from EP, and should have a strong range ourselves.

I wouldn't be completely shocked if someone flatted pre with AK, rather than 3B'ing us. Most low stakes opponents playing 1/2 aren't looking to play a huge pot without a huge hand when the $5 straddle goes on. The straddle will often cause them to tighten up with their calling and raising ranges.

Consider checking more of your range on the flop in multi-way pots, especially when there are more opponents behind you than in front of you. Low stakes opponents are going to stab a lot when the PFR checks to them. And their bet sizing will often telegraph their hand strength.

Consider how your bet sizing on each street relates to your opponents' ranges. The smaller you bet, the wider opponents' continuing ranges. In theory, they shouldn't be calling too wide in multi-way pots, but very often low stakes recs will continue much wider than they should, believing they're getting the correct pot or implied odds to continue with weak value or their draws.

My analysis of opponents' ranges here would be:

PRE - UTG1 should have a reasonably playable hand when he calls our raise next to act, but he shouldn't be very strong when he doesn't 3B. Occasionally he'll show up with AK or QQ, but he'll rarely have AA/KK. BTN and BB could be calling with a wider range, even though they shouldn't be.

FLOP - They could have flopped some TP hands with KX, mostly worse KX, but sometimes AK or some weird up-and-down combo like K6 or K3 that made a sneaky 2P. They may have some sets with 66 or 33. They could have some other PP's from 22 to TT, occasionally maybe even JJ or QQ, some whack 1P hands like 65 or A3s, some pair + draw hands like A6ss, some OESD's with 54, a fair number of flush draws, some random AX that should have folded pre but didn't, and a lot of air that just completely whiffed.

That's all before we check or bet. If we bet, a small bet size is going to allow them to continue with a lot of that stuff, and a larger bet size is going to fold a lot of that stuff out.

Here, when we bet 1/3 pot, we're allowing them to continue with a lot of it. Likely the worst PP's like 22-55 and all the air fold out. Maybe 77-TT fold. But a lot of low stakes recs are going to continue whenever they have any piece of this board.

We should also expect that 2P+ are going to raise here, a lot, when the board is two-tone, and we have so much KX in our PFR range they can target for value. When they don't raise, we're going to have the best hand a lot. We should be prepared to bomb the turn on a brick.

TURN - That's about as bricky as it gets, unless someone gets here with 99. It also puts a second FD on board, and could conceivably give someone a BD straight draw. With so many draws to get value from, and so few better hands to worry about, we should bomb it - bet pot, or over-bet.

As played, when we only bet 1/3 pot, I'm not sure what we're repping, and we're not folding out very much that got to the turn. All the draws are still getting a reasonably good price to chase. We're setting ourselves up to either be out-drawn or bluffed off the best hand on a lot of rivers.

I think this small bet is mostly just folding out a lot of crap we had crushed, like trashy KX, PP's like 77 and 88 that were 2nd pair but got downgraded to 3rd pair, some sticky / stubborn AX or whatever, and anything that was speculative on the flop but didn't pick up any equity, like maybe 54 with no flush draw.

That last part is important - if we're hoping to get value from worse hands, we're not going about it the right way when we bet small on the turn. Most of the hands we have crushed are folding no matter how small we bet.

Maybe K2 with no FD calls if we bet $25 again, but we're letting our opponents realize too much of their equity for too low a price when we do that. For the most part, the hands we should be looking to target are the inelastic ones - and those will call a much bigger bet. Hands like KJhh and 87ss aren't folding if we pot it.

Since most of our opponents' range is going to be worse value or draws getting to the river, our action on the river should either be a small blocker bet (with a plan to fold if we get raised), or check-evaluate, where we're mostly just folding when our low-stakes opponents bet, because they're just not going to be betting thinly enough or bluffing enough.

If you're going to c-bet at a higher frequency when OOP, and use smaller sizing on both flop and turn, you really need to be prepared to check-evaluate a lot of rivers, and balance by having some triple-barrels and check-raises in your arsenal.

If we got here this way with a hand like AQhh, we could triple-barrel or check-raise. We could have some combos that were FDFD's that make sneaky straights, like 87ss, that can function well as a triple barrel or check-call. We could have some sets that block our opponents flushes, like KhKx. Hell, we could just have AhAx here, and either call, or check-raise as a bluff, knowing V can't have the nuts.

The point is that a small-bet, small-bet line works best when we can show up on the river with some under-repped hands, allowing our opponents to make more mistakes.

You didnt state the stack sizes but the KQ hand the turn is the real issue. This needs to be an over bet.

Yeah I was just scared someone binked K9s or was slow playing some flopped 2p/set, so by blasting turn, I’d essentially fold out everything worse and stack off to better hands. Maybe my logic is flawed.

I usually only bet pot here with 2p+ because if I do it with KQo, they’ll fold all worse hands a ton (even KJ gets scared because they feel they may have to call bigger bets on turn) and only continue when I’m beat.

Don’t we funnel/narrow down their continuing ranges only to hands that beat us by going so big with just 1p? Don’t we want KJ or worse Kx to call?

Absolutely not. Those hands are still going to call and you get maximum value from them and all the draws, which there's a ton of.

Wow - thanks for your detailed analysis, it just blew my mind. I wish I can improvise on my thought process when facing these turn spots. My logic is usually betting bigger allows worse hands like KJ to fold and narrows their calling ranges to only hands that beat me, but I discount the fact that it’s highly unlikely that I’m beat when they cap their ranges on flop by not raising (which is so so important). To me, it’s about trying to lose the minimum when behind - which clearly costs me the pot often. I should focus more on punishing the drawing portion of their ranges and put more belief in the fact that my KQ is good there most of the time.

Part of the reason I bet small on turn was also because I am confident in my post flop abilities of being able to x/f river if the spade came in. Which is why I ended up x/c on this seemingly blank river, unless he somehow had backdoor hearts in the form of Kxhh.

FWIW - UTG1 showed up with 74ss lol… so my read was indeed correct.

I'm not sure that solvers advocate much for 5way pots (because they haven't been solved). I mean, generally the theory is extrapolated.

In this hand that you're utg is significant and if pots are regularly going 5-way, KQ is probably best in the muck pre.

Utg1 is meant to have nearly as strong a range as you do and rather than think about c-bet sizing I'd be checking and possibly delay c-betting, if anything. I can't think of many boards where I'd be c-betting into 4 players from utg, although I agree this low semi-connected two-tone board with a broadway is better than most for a c-bet.

This is a table full of loose passives where UTG1 flatted pre with 74s, and the others with god knows what. Isn’t KQo dominating their flatcall ranges significantly in that when we flop a K or Q, we take their TP worse kickers to quite a bit of value town, and can check fold easily when we whiff? It’s kind of a situation where position is meaningless because nobody is 3betting pre with TT+/AQ+ mostly and everyone plays ABC postflop.

Also - feels like we’re missing out on extracting value from all their garbage by not cbetting flop when we hit TP, because that’s the primary street they’ll call a lot with their worse TP, second pairs, etc. and if raised, we can simply fold.

Bomb or check raise turn, 74ss hits the muck.

If your experience differs, adjust by betting less often with thin value, and instead start betting larger with thick value, combined with over- folding whenever our opponents' most obvious draws come in.

Well these are some assumptions which might justify deviating but the fact is we are still going 5-way oop: this means we are sharing equity (even with 74o) against three players who have position on us and only one who doesn't (the BB). While utg1 has 74 on this occasion, other times he might have AK, AQ, 66 or 33 (not to mention K6 and K3). I mean I would prefer RFIng KQ if I knew players were 3betting AK and AQ since we'd be more firmly top of range once they just call pre. The key point is that sharing equity out of position in a 5-way pot far outweighs the fact that most of our opponents are playing wide ranges.

Sure RFIng KQ isn't that different from AK or AQ, so it's not a major mistake. But even with AA or AK I'm checking flop (would bet KK though and very rarely AQs, JTs or QTs with bdfd if I knew I could profitably barrel). I'm checking flop under the assumption that my opponents will generally bet their TP or better, so that's why we can delay c-bet on certain turn cards. While you might argue we lose value, I'd say well how often are you thinking of betting all 3 streets unimproved 5 ways with one pair? Getting 1 or 2 streets of value meets expectations and allowing for betting rather than calling actions on the flop from our opponents helps us narrow their ranges considerably.

If we were 3-way or HU then obviously we can more profitably bet 3 streets unimproved on certain run-outs.

You’re saying to check flop but look what happens when I check flop:

I open $15 UTG with KJcc, get 4 calls

Flop ($75): J87r
Checks to BTN who bets $40, folds to me, I call

Turn ($155): 2x
I check, BTN bets $90, idk where I’m at

I could’ve been way more clear if I cbet $20-25 myself and found out where I’m at..

I hear all the wanted KJ to stay in and only folding better hands, etc. Solver talk

Bottom line is you let a very weak draw get there and beat you. Pot the flop and that hand disappears.

Again a $25 flop bet might fold better & be called by worse in solver land, but the average joe live thinks you’re weak & calls with anything. No information is gathered. Followed by a weak turn bet & you’re just giving your money away.

Then, after you let all the draws get there, you’re read (guess) was right, but you called anyway on the river. If you’re going to open UTG, bottom of range, & play it weakly, I suggest you fold pre-flop in the future.

I raise AJo and KQo UTG and fold weaker offsuit hands. You could fold preflop, but few people even here would.

With 60xBB, you mostly have to go with TPTK. Betting small and letting people draw cheaply is not good. You could be beaten. It is even possible someone flatted with AK. However, you can't worry too much about that. If you get raised at some point, then you can reevaluate.

Playing top pair is tricky. I make most of my money at low stakes with sets and in 3-bet pots with premium hands.

lmao how has no one questioned or asked for an explanation of the math in op