[Cezar]

As I was playing PLO a few days ago, I found myself in a 4-way pre-flop all-in fest with this beast :7 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 8 [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]9 [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]J [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img]

In post portem, I put this hand through Cardplayer's Omaha calculator. Against two high pairs (and one donk with card salad) my 35% was actually the best pot equity of the 4 hands.

This got me thinking. The Fundamental Theorem of Poker would seem to imply that there always is a an objective, mathematically correct way to play your hand (save for big bet poker, where you may be correct to bet, but you still get to choose exactly how much).

How would this apply in multiway pots, where correctness of your decision depend on the people to act behind you ? A hand like ragged aces will always be over 50% favorite heads up, except for better aces. But fail to isolate, and you quickly end up with less than 33% against two fat drawing hands.
Or the reverse situation, where you have less than 50% heads up, but lose very little equity from multiple hands entering the pot behind you?
And just to add further to the puzzle, it is possible to concieve a rock-paper-scissors scenario, each hand being favorite over one other.

Of course, in real life this decision would be based on what you think your opponents are likely to do. But if we ignore psychological considerations, is there still an objective mathematical decision ?

Cezar.