Have Your Cake and Eat It Too
The hand:
$100 NL Hold ‘em. You have AsQs and raise to $4 in middle position. The big blind calls. Effective stacks are deep: $200.
Flop comes Ks9h8s, giving you the nut flush draw but not much else. Big blind bets $5. With stacks this deep, you decide to call.
Turn comes 2c. Pot is $18. Big blind bets $14.
Now, before I ask the question, let’s look at some options for what the BB is up to:
1. He’s betting a decent, but not great, hand. Like KQ.
2. He’s betting a draw. Notably a flush draw (which is then lower than yours) or a straight draw.
3. He’s betting a strong hand, e.g. two-pair+.
3. He’s FOS and is betting a nothing-hand.
A misconception that I’ve seen often enough to believe is common is that “you can’t have your cake and eat it too” meaning that if you call his turn bet because you figure he could have a monster and will pay off enough to warrant it the times you hit your flush, you’re not allowed to also factor in the chance that your hand is actually best. This idea is wrong. You’re very allowed to think both things possible and you’re very allowed to make decisions accordingly.
It’s true that it can only be one or the other, but before we know which it is, we have to work with his range of hands, not the actual hand.
If it helps - and I sincerely doubt that it does - you can compare this to quantum physics and Schrödinger’s Cat.
*WOOSH*
That’s the sound of this concept going over my head :/
Why can’t we factor in the times when our hand is actually best?
Comment by ChuckTs — January 31, 2007 @ 3:39 pm
I apparently did a poor job of phrasing it. What I’m saying is that that’s the misconception; You can in fact factor in both at the same time. Some people claim that this is wrong since only one can be true (they’re mutually exclusive) but it IS in fact okay to factor in both at the same time.
Comment by FPaulsson — January 31, 2007 @ 3:42 pm
Ah I see I see. And good point; tbh I found it interesting when I first found out about full hand analysis (by breaking down to hand ranges, then EV for each etc). It applied perfectly to my statistics class I was taking. I suppose it’s the non-mathematically-minded who see it the other way…
Comment by ChuckTs — February 1, 2007 @ 5:59 am