Hand Reading

It's obviously very important to put your opponents on a range of hands. However, when you're playing in a shorthanded (6-max) game of NL holdem and your 5 opponents are seeing the flop at a 55%-85% rate and going to showdown at a 35%-50% rate how do you do that? When you're finally in a hand for a raise and 4 people call your raise cold how do you even begin to put your opponents on a hand? How do you proceed in that type of situation. Do you just close your eyes and shove your chips in on the flop when you flop 2 pair or better? TPTK or better?

What are the stakes and the dynamics of the table? Is everyone limping? How often are there PF raises...and at what multiple of the BB do raises take?

If everyone is limping, the SB and BB could be on any two cards.

What happens post flop? Passive checking? Or a lot of action?

Without knowing more, I am guessing this table is playing loose and passive. The collective hand ranges could then constitute neary every possibility...especially all suited hands, all Ace-anything, middle to high o.s. connectors.

If your preflop raises with premium hands do not reduce the field, try raising more. I'd avoid getting fancy by slowplaying or check raising. Play premium hands for full value. Maybe play Ax suited more often...as well as other hands that fair well in multi-way pots.

a mix of Loose Aggressive and Loose Passive. The Loose Aggressive players will literally raise with anything pre-flop and the loose passive players will call with any 2 cards. After the flop the turn will eliminate players only if they hit NO piece of the flop and there are no gutshots or backdoors. If any of these players have a piece or an outside shot they're calling off their stack in the case of the passive players...which is great. However, the LAG's can and will raise with anything or nothing...and will keeo firing.

What are the stakes? And how would you describe your style of play?

Agaisnt a very loose table, with a mixture of aggressive and passives, the conventional strategy is to play tigher, play position and play aggressively--check raise the LAGs and come over the top of the calling stations when you put them on draws. TPTK will likely take many pots and two pair many more, but no matter how tight you play against such competition, expect wide swings in your chip stack.

I'm not really sure what the stakes and/or my style of play has to do with how to play in the specific situation that I described.

But, for your info I'm TAG 18.5/6.7/2.1

The game I described was NL $200 buy, blinds of $1/2

Unless you're trying to say that players at NL $200 are not as good as those at NL $2000, or better than those at nl$25, please explain how the info that I provided changes the optimal way to play in a game that I previously described. The way the game is being played should dictate how you play, not the amount of the blinds or how you generally play in an average situation. Or am I missing something big here?
Thanks

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The game I described was NL $200 buy, blinds of $1/2

Unless you're trying to say that players at NL $200 are not as good as those at NL $2000, or better than those at nl$25, please explain how the info that I provided changes the optimal way to play in a game that I previously described.

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I am in no way trying to suggest that players at smaller stakes are intrinsically better or worse than players at the higher levels. It has been my experience, that, in general, there is much looser play at the micro-limits and tighter play at the higher stakes.

If you see no difference between calling a $5 raise with a gut-shot draw versus a $500 raise in a similar situation, then you are a better poker player than me--seriously.

And you are correct; optimal play is optimal play.