I believe you confuse this with AMEX.

Many have more than 4 personal cards with Chase and most of them require recon to get their new cards.

Chase does not care too much on number of the cards, but the total credit line extended to you. If your credit profile shows 60K is the ceiling, however yo divide that 60K into 4 card or 8 cards, dont seem to matter much.

Chase also cares about whether you just open / close accounts without keeping it for the most part of a year at the least, as well as how much you put spend on the cards, how often you use the cards. It is clear to me that Chase also values a customer uses the card on everyday basis even not a big spender at all. My SIL is one such customer. Her UA Explorer card is in her wallet for everything. She got $100 statement credit EACH of the past 3 years to erase the $95 annual fee.

I also feel that hoarding the credit lines have been an outdated concept now. In the years before financial crisis, the standard practice for churners was to immediately reduce credit line to the minimum level right after card approval so to leave room for more cards (and instant approval.) Then came the financial crisis and all of a sudden, the line that gave up was gone for good (or at least a year) while hoarding lines would have bargaining chips during recon...

Now we are 3 or more years into economy upswing, the released lines these days are returned back to your credit profile instead of being lost. In our household we have stopped hoarding lines since 18 months ago. We canceled cards when there are no satisfactory retention offers without asking to consolidate the line to another card. Since then we have found the applications have been instant approval 80% of the time, including the 60K Ink card when many folks were being grilled.

Anyone in this for a year or more, should have gotten the idea of the "ceiling" of the max credit line the bank is willing to give, not just Chase - each bank has its own criteria but you should be able to "feel" it if you are good at your game. Manage that ceiling so to leave room for more is critical.

Not to apply too many and too frequently is just another good practice that one should observe.