Pot Odds - Always worth a call?
I was playing in a 1/2 cash game the other day, and I started to wonder about pot odds and being priced into a hand. At the hand in question, a player raised to $50 and there were two subsequent callers. The big blind decided to call the $48 raise on the fact that he was priced into the hand and was getting pot odds. I understand that any two cards are worth a call when you are getting 4 to 1 on your money, but does this always make sense when you are starting with $200 max at the table? I was watching players make these pot odd calls all night (pre-flop) and watching their chips slowly disappear. I know this is a good way to double up when your cards hit, but with any two cards, does this really make sense? I typically am a little more selective in the cards I play, depending on the size of the pre-flop raise. At 1/2, I typically will not call with any two cards if the raise is over $12. This assumes that the other callers have at maximum $200 in front of them (they are not calling with huge chip stacks). Your comments would be appreciated.
Comments
I think the math is important but there are other factors to consider. The odds only work in the long term, not the short term. Not only do you have to worry about how much the players have in front of them, but also how deep are their pockets, i.e. will they rebuy or will they rat hole. Are you going to playing this same game every week or every day and are you looking at your monthly or yearly ROI. Are you planning to stay for one more hour or 10 more hours. Can you afford a rebuy or two or three for the night in an effort to even out the variance.
The other question is are you sure you know when you have hit the flop. For example I think it is easier to figure out where you are when you have a pocket pair than if you have A-J and catch a jack high flop. In other words, you may have a winning hand at least 1 out 4 times, but will you know for sure when you actually have beat those odds.
A theme I notice in your posts is your facinsation with looking at someone's starting stack and ending stack and then trying to interpolate some kind of poker theory from that isolated event's gain or loss. You are trying to analyse variance (aka noise) and it won't get you anywhere.
You really need to start thinking about your poker sessions as being in month+ long spurts rather than determing if you are a good player by the fact you left a game up or down.
* yes I realise this post may not exactly fit to your OP, but everytime I see something you write I think to myslef "This guy is the most results oriented poker player in the world".
While you were discussing a cash game, in a tourney pot odds will take you only so far since when your chips are gone so are you. Work on placing players on a hand and once your good at that then consider what to do with pot odds and any 2 cards.
But it would be -EV for me to post my strategies when I may well be playing against the readers in that same cash game, especially that mystery shark named -ev.
I think BBC Z's point is that I am not looking at the big picture and in the long run this call will have a positive EV based on the pot odds. I think this is true that I am only looking at the current session which may be limiting my overall expected value (although I don't play that much). Please elaborate BBC Z if you don't mind. I think Waltsfriend has some good points regarding whether these players will rebuy and what are their current stacks. I was trying to simplify the situation by having each player with the same starting stack.
I just find it hard to make a call for $50 with any two random cards in a $1/$2 session, even if this may be a +EV move. 25 x BB seems a little excessive. With an unlimited cashflow, maybe you can ride out these negative situations where you lose the hand, but for the average 1/2 player, these calls can get costly.
(Congrats on your big wins in Brantford, BTW. Truly a great accomplishment for a 'fish out of water'. I hope one day I'll have the time and resources and mad skilz to run with the Big Fish!)
Back to the OP. Calling a 50 bet in a 1/2 game with 3 opponents and 150 behind is pretty much idiotic even if your opponents are absolute fish. (Just remember a blind donkey can find a bale of hay once in a while.) Even worse if you are OOP and playing any two. You have to think about it. What do you hope will flop? What is the likelihood of that happening? How much will these donkeys pay off if you hit some miracle? Does the reward compensate for the risk? I think you would be far better off to push compared to calling. But you are likely to get called because you don't have enough behind so I hope you have something. In other words, you fold here pretty much every time unless you have a significantly better than average hand and then you push.
You want to quote Largay here but you gotta go back to some solid poker fundamentals before you can try getting fancy. Largay was talking about building a big stack on a capped buy-in table. He was illustrating one counter-intuitive play which also built an image as a wild player for later action. He was talking about calling 20 when there was already 5 people in and ended up calling all-in getting something like 4-1. This was at the start of a session and he was also fully prepared to rebuy. It was not a sound 'poker' play - much more of a 'meta game' play.
Start with some Cloutier (ugh!). Move up to Sklansky and Miller. Master them then start thinking about how to apply Largay and some of the other recent writers.
Calling $48 more OOP in the BB is highly -EV compared to giving up the $2. Your pot odds are 3.2-to-1 (not 4 to 1), but unless your cards are so good that you have better than 3.2-to-1 odds that your hand will be the best after the flop against three other players, then it is a very easy fold. Unless I have AA or KK, I only have to look at one card before I quickly fold my hand.
Unless you are the best player in the table who can outplay the fish post-flop AND the stacks are extremely deep such that you have great implied odds, then you do NOT want to play any two cards. You may be getting extremely juicy 9-to-1 pots odds to call a $20 raise with 7-2 offsuit on the BB, but you should not waste your money with a call.
Maniacs that call my big raise are my favourite kind of players and my greatest source of poker income, especially if they are OOP and without good implied odds. In one of the clubs that you, -ev, and I play, I didn't have time to stop by the bank before the tournament so I only had $35 left at the $1/$2 cash game with waltsfriend, Kristy_Sea and kidpokerv2, but with a maniac at our table who kept calling my raises, I ended up the biggest stack with over $600!
Also since when are you always supposed to call with any 2 cards if you're getting 3-1 or even 4-1. If there are 3 other players in the pot and you have 23 and they all raised/called 50$ You're in alot worse shape than 20%.
Now Buddy, we are getting somewhere. I did correct my pot odds in my latest post. My thinking is that it is an easy fold. The players at my table making these cards have above starting stacks (maybe in the $300 range) mostly and typically will buy in for increments of $100 at a time when they lose all their chips. My opinion, making this call is not a straight decision based on pot odds before the flop. They are definitely LA players, and think they can outplay everyone else after the flop with any two cards. These players are making $50 calls with 34o, etc. really based on pot odds and this is the situation I am trying to understand.
This statement will likely get me into trouble, but I'm on this forum to improve my game which is only a hobby and I don't take it as seriously as some people do. A lot of people think position is important in this situation. I disagree for the following reason. If I am playing a LA player and he raises $50 pre-flop and there are three other callers (I hold AKh) and I am on the button, if I miss the flop and one of the other players comes out with a big raise, how does position help in this situation? granded I could have re-raised pre-flop, but assuming I called the $50, position is really only relevant depending on the type of players you are facing. I still have the option to re-raise but is this wise when I don't hit the flop and there are three other players that have hit the flop or started with a pocket pair?
some very good points re-inforced by Buddy's comments. I guess when I saw these guys making these calls with any two cards, I recall the comments in Largay about pot odds and making the call with any two cards which I may have taken out of context. I don't like the idea of pushing with any two cards as you are correct, I will likely get called and should have a good starting hand to make this move. Thanks again for all your comments and hopefully some other players got something useful out of this discussion. Not sure if any of the TV commentators have anything to add?
That is a soild point. Huge raises like this turn the game into a late stage Sit-n-go. Play your hand for its showdown value and consider if your stack has any fold equity.
If I held AK, had any less than $200 behind and my call was going to put 4 players to the flop I would probably push to try and thin the field. If I was deeper than that I would see a flop. But that is with AK.
Even with a small PP in this situation you need to be deep and someone else to be pretty deep here and willing to stack off for you even to be able to play for set value.
Playing any 2 here is pure spewage.
Now, I know there is a winking smiley face in there, but if this is really your attitude to providing your own insight to the game, I invite you to leave the forum and never return. This is a community where people set aside the concept of 'educating the fish' in order to help the people that want it so that everyone wins. If everyone carried that selfish attitude, we wouldnt have a CPF.
No, my point is that you are seeing people make ridiculously bad plays and wondering if they're right because they win sometimes. BlondeFish explained it perfectly.
FYP.
Think of it this way:
If 64o calls a 50 raise pf and stacks AA on a 532 flop do you think "Man that guy's brilliant!"
If in the same situation the same player with the same hand stacks off on a J62 flop and you think "Man, that guy's a donkey!"
If so, you may be suffering from results oriented thinking, which is almost as useful to a poker player as hindsight bias.
Seriously, sometimes you have to accept that some people are only thinking on either the zeroeth or first level, and leave it at that. Variance happens.
Your the second person to say I am results oriented... now I have a complex
As noted earlier, can we keep this thread on track. If a player doesn't want to discuss strategy, that is their own personal preference. My opinion is, if you are good enough to extract information from this site and use it against me live, you deserve to take all my money. There are a lot of poker players out there, and to keep track of each of their poker playing habits would be a full time job. Most of the good players out there mix up their play anyways so discussing strategies really should come back to haunt you.
Per pokerJAH's request, my next post will be back on topic about how to exploit his huge leaks and take all his money on Saturday.
huge leaks, I'm not the guy calling $50 raises with 45o. Any constructive criticism that you have would be welcome. As you have dealt at my table before, you know that I typically play pretty tight but I do play the odd suited connectors (especially my favourite J10).
Position is important in this case if you do hit your flop. A safe looking flop of A56, what do you do with your AK oop? Most likely you're going to bet it and pretty much commit yourself. Say you bet it, and you have a few shoves and calls behind you, pretty much guaranteed that you lost your stack. On the button in the same scenario, you can make an easy fold without further damage.
Eh I dunno dude. If I hit that flop with AK and $300 in my stack (at the start of the hand) I am going broke everytime. Wait...EVERYTIME. Barring an incredible read.
With and A in my hand and an A on the board it is very unlikely that one of my three opponents holds AA. 55, 66 or A5, A6 are so unlikely that I need to go broke here with $250 left in my stack and $200 in the pot.
If you seriously consider folding here than what were you hoping for when you put $50 in pre-flop.
Folding here is bad.
As for the hand itself, why do u figure 55, 66 or A5, A6 are so unlikely?
When I have multiple allins and calls behind me, theres no way I figure my tptk is still good. Though at a 1/2 live table, I can somewhat see it being happening
isn't this more defensive position? I thought the point of playing position was to be more aggressive and to take advantage of having the opportunity to make the last decision, not fold?