Odds & Patterns

This is just something I've noticed from hand analysis threads + playing in freerolls and microstakes.

Firstly, since you usually only have one hand to analyze(and it's really tedious going through your own session let alone someone else's), people give answers heavily based on pot odds. That makes sense because without any more info, pot odds and the cards are all you have to use.

The problem is that at the tiniest stakes I've noticed that other players confuse odds with patterns. So they'll bet pot because they know you'll fold to a pot sized bet, and if it's a three-way pot, and the third player calls you can watch the hand play out and you'll see that you should have stayed in, because although you didn't technically have odds to call, they figured "pot sized bet means she'll fold" not "pot sized bet means I'm pricing her out", stuff like that. I know you needn't bet pot or more to price someone out of their draw technically, but I'm talking lowest to no stakes here. But once they see that there's an amount to bet that will make you fold, even if it's accidentally connected to pot odds, they can and will abuse it.

Then comes another weird part. Implied odds seem to work themselves out. Obviously I'm stuck playing against a majority of players who are really clueless, but still - it rarely fails, I get in a hand against a couple of players and I flop or turn the nuts but they call anyway because they just can't bring themselves to fold a hand. They call with inferior hands. If their inferior hand is say the dummy end of my nut straight or a weak flush as opposed to strong to nut flush, they'll even raise. That's not counting the players who raise pre-flop and get married to their cards. I'm sorry, but when you know you'll get paid, aren't you supposed to stay in the hand?

Anyway, I was just thinking that sometimes odds are confused with patterns + considering the number of players who for some reason play each card in the hole separately, say four diamonds to a flush lands on the board, and they shove with A7os or Q5os, with the weaker card being the diamond, well, maybe just maybe some of the plays that look bad at a glance(from CCers who are generally good or better), are actually not so bad.

Yes but you have to KNOW you will get paid rather that know that you will end up with the best hand.

If an opponent freezes up when a scare card comes (your card) then you arnt gettingpaid.. you were putting money in whilst behind and not getting any in whilst ahead.

So when an opponent will bet after your hand is made, implied odds apply.. when he wont, pot odds apply.

Dont overestimate implied odds.

i.e. set mining .. the odds of hitting a set are about 7.5:1 so people use the 10:1 rule. But the 10:1 rule dosent take into account that unless the betting was strong preflop, you probably wont get to stack off.. turning the win into a long term loosing play.

Now if you look to get 20-30:1 before set mining... now when you stack off.. you get paid enough to cover all the times you hit sets and didnt stack off.

Hi Stu, I'm still trying to grasp the odds for this one. The only way I can see getting 20-30:1 is in a fixed limit game. I need an example of how to get those odds in a NL or PL game. With an example it should make better sense to me.

Thanks for responding at all.

Stacks of 100 BB

An early raise of 3BB, followed by your call in position of 3BB

Stack size / cost of call

97 / 3 = 32