Hi guys,

I was studying preflop ranges in monker solver, UTG vs Btn and taking a look at which hands want to 3bet/flat. While I was studying I came across something rather interesting I don't understand and would like you guys' input. After facing a UTG pot raise, with "Connected A-high non-broadway, suited ace" hands, Hero is flating 19.2% and 3betting 1.3%. Hero is flatting/3betting hands like AJ97ss, AT97ss, AT98ss, A976ss, ect… on the btn. Okay, makes sense. Hero has 45% equity with a hand like AT98ss vs UTG range and has position and will be able to realize most equity, or over realize equity here.

After, MP+CO cold calls, Hero is mostly folding all of those hands as stated above! It took me by surprise at first, especially since the Solver is not squeezing much from the blinds after 4 players are in the pot, but again it now makes sense. MP is cold calling the 6-10 percentile of hands optimally, and CO is calling the 5-8 percentile of hands optimally, so now Hero only has 22.63% equity 4-way with AT98ss, and can easily be dominated playing against such strong of ranges.

But, fish don't play optimally, so I tweaked the ranges to 1%-19% utg, 6%-40% MP, 5%-50% to illustrate more how a fish soft game might play, and too my surprise 4-way so far, we only have 23.88% equity while MP has 24.02%, and CO has 23.63%! I would have thought with a dominating suit and connectedness that we would be pushing more equity than that. Without UTG, we still only have 34% vs the 2 fishes' ranges. In game, I am always calling in these spots (with the hands above) because I feel like we have higher implied odds than an optimal strategy vs the 2 fish players. I would be probably be calling hands like A765ss and playing cautiously IP. With 2 fish callers, is my assumptions that this is a profitable call because I'm netting more EV when I hit my hand probably, or is my thinking too ambitious and I should be folding and only expanding my calling range from optimal only a little bit. An optimal strategy with this hand category is folding 96.9%% on the btn in the multi-way scenario where vs just the utg, its only folding 79.5%. Pretty big difference I would think. What do you think about these spots? From a theory perspective with the loose fish callers in between, should we be flatting the hands above, or is it too ambitious and we will have to play too straight forward and we should be folding?