Betting your sets in multi-way pots

When you’re involved in a three- or four-way pot you need to bet most flops, not just to get chips into the pot but also to protect your hand and isolate the action. If no-one has an overpair or a draw you’re not likely to get many chips anyway, in which case you rake in a smaller pot and move on. It’s better to rake in a small pot than it is to let three other players take two free cards. Fire at all but the driest of boards.

By betting and raising you not only charge drawing hands a premium on the next card, but you also offer overpairs a chance to make gross mistakes. And if you make the pot juicy, but haven’t raised so much that you’re obviously committed, you’re making the pot more attractive for players with good draws to shove.

Killing action

If you slow-play your set you’re in danger of allowing a card to appear that lets one of your opponents catch up, allows an opponent to represent a bigger hand, or simply kills your action.

 If someone hit top pair on the flop with something like J-T they may well be up for giving you a spin and calling to see the turn. If a blank comes out you may get even more out of them, while if a danger card comes out you probably won’t get much more out of them. Even if you have an aggressive image most players appreciate that play tightens up a little in multi-way pots, so you can’t expect to get called as light as you might in other spots. That said, as players are less likely to slow-play in multi-way pots it can make positional betting more effective.

If you think someone is making a move or betting ‘to find out where they are’ you can raise them off their hand with a steal. They’ll often think their top or second pair isn’t good any more, fold and then congratulate themselves for getting away from the hand so cheaply.

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