Book examples VS Real play!!!

Hello guys, Im new here...Nice, usefull talks going on =) I just wanted to know your opinion on those "odds" in books and examples they show - the pot is 190, opponent bets 30 - is it good to call with flush draw??? Now I'm sorry, but this is BS =) nobodoy ever bets like this... The bets are usually 1/3 to full pot, so where can we use the odds? It seems a bit strange... kind'a no use of it, as its always big bets and you you have like 10 outs hand 5% of the time... Any comments and views on this would be MUCH appreciated...thanks in advance =)

Yeah, I get what you're saying. Virtually everyone will habitually bet enough to deny you the right pot odds to call chasing your draws. This is where reads on your opponent and implied odds come in. Will he continue to bet into a draw that gets there? Will he at least check/call even if he stops leading at the pot? Will he do this for multiple streets of value? Is his stack even deep enough to potentially give you the right implied odds IF he is willing to pay you off?

Lots to consider, even more than I've listed here. But, just from a strictly pot odds point of view, almost everyone knows (or just out of habit) to bet enough to deny correct immediate pot odds to chase draws.

This will come with experience. At micros almost every time the villain will bet to deny your odds. But there are things you can do here. The texture of the board and the cards in you hand will tell you how strong you draw is. For example if you have AK of diamonds and the board is Qd 10s 3d, your draw is verry strong. You have a lot of options here. You can call a 2/3 pot size bet easy. There is a verry good chance to complete you draw or hit an A or K or J to make you a favourite to win.

If you have 78 of diamonds and the board is Qd 10s 3d, you have a weak draw. If you see a lot of agression postflop is better that you fold even if you know your opponent is somehow bluffing, because your odds of winning this hand are small.

Counting odds comes with experince and i think it takes years. For beginners like us is better that we take it simple and play what we know to play. If you are not certain with your hand better fold it and w8 for a made hand to crush you opponent. At micros the simple way to grind is to bet for value the good hands and to fold the hands that you are not confortable with. You will not get 100% from your hands but at least you will avoid big mistakes that will crush your bankroll.

Ps. Book play vs online play. There is no difference. Problem is that there is no begginner that can memorise all the situations presented in the book by pros but he can follow a line and get some helpfull tools like HM to aid him. And of course there is the IQ factor . Some think faster some slower. The better once you see at TV. But even an average winning player after years of experience and hard study can make a living out of it.

I think you need to hit the books a little harder...

In your example, pot 190/bet 30, we should probably raise w/ a flush draw. If the bet was 1/3 pot we should probably still raise. If the bet is 1/2 to pot size we can profitably call... We can use pot odds any time we are facing a bet.

If we have 10 outs, how large does our opponent need to bet to get us to fold?

...thanx everybody for your thoughts! I gradualy start to understand all this betting stuff. 1/3 - 1/2 bets actually ar ok, and you can try to work it through. Sometimes implied odds can help a little and so on. Just got a bit angry at that moment as I didnt quite understand it...my fault =)

Now I'm studying quite a lot of this stuff, and came across a situation which is quite odd for me. The calculators online are ofcorse on the writers side, but I honestly do not understand how they calculate it.

I'm holding: Qd Jd

My opponent: 4c 4h

Flop: 9d Td 4s

And it shows, that in this situation my chances are 42%. How they work it out? I have 14 outs - 8 diamonds (whithout the 4d), three Kings and three 8's. 14 outs in 2 cards is 51%. I guess it may be of the fact, that even if i get the flush or straight on the turn, there is a chance that he vill get full house or 4 of a kind on river. But how do i work it out on the go, what is the calculation process???

True, he has outs too - maybe more than you realize - 7 on the turn and if the flop doesn't connect for him the river will add 3 more. I'd recount your outs on that hand

Calculate Outs -
With two cards to come after the flop you multiply your number of outs by four. With one card to come after the turn, you multiply your number of outs by two. This will give you a quick figure to work with. If you have a four-card flush after the flop you have nine outs. With two cards to come, you multiply the nine by four and you get 36 percent chance of making the flush. The chart shows the true odds at 35 percent. With one card to come you multiply nine by two and get 18 percent. The chart shows that the true figure is 19.6. It is not completely accurate but it is pretty close, and it is an easy calculation to do in your head.

Thanks media! I read about the 2/4 rule, thats really handy. the thing is, that if he doesn't get one on the turn, yes he gets + 3 outs more. And when I simulate this in the calculator it shows the right percentage for my 14 outs - about 28 %. I just wanted to know, with what hidden outs does he get the advantage on the flop? Or is it done somehow else. Because if I play poker and I see this situation i just calculate my 14 outs by two cards to come and I get about 51 % and act accordingly. But it turns out that in this situation I get only 42%, so Im actually quite off the track. So how could I calcule it in real poker game, how do I get those 42 %?

Do I understand you are trying to calculate the other guys outs as well?

Of course you understand that you have no way of really knowing what someone else holds - so doing a total hand vs hand calculation (all players involved) is completely different than calculating for yourself after the flop at the table.

Hero (you) QJd
Villian - 4c4h (you don't know this)
Flop = 9d Td 4s

To improve your hand with one card you have NINE diamonds (you don't know he has one), three kings and three eights still out there since you already counted the diamonds (15 total). For the absolute nuts you only have 2 outs - 8d and Kd.

Your percentage by itself is 54.1% **Addendum to rule of fours - A more accurate way to estimate your percentage chance of making your hand is by using Solomon’s Rule. To use it, multiply the number of outs by 4 then subtract the number of outs in excess of 8. In the 15 out example above, Solomon’s Rule would be: ( 15 * 4 ) – ( 15 – 8 ) = 53%.

This is all estimation to help determine your course of action.

The actual and real calculation is only after a hand is complete - that's what you are coming up with on 42% because ALL factors are known which is not going to be the case during play.

Take a look at pokerstove.com which is a calculator that accounts for opponent ranges.

...OK, I got it now...Thanx Media. My fault again. I'm getting used to it and trying to be more calm when I think the books are wrong =)) as in the end It's me again =) By the way that Solomons rule looks good...as I understand it applies only to 8 or more outs? Everything below that is multiplied by 2 (turn) and 4 (river). Thanx again man =)

Not sure what you're playing or if we're even referring to Tournament Play here or cash games?
I agree with your comment about the postflop bet-sizing but this is typically in the micro buyin MTT's (higher buyins you don't see players mashing their "POT" button... there's actually more skillful postflop play happening... ie. in micros you'll see an AK flopping TPTK on a dryboard, mashing pot btn & folding out most of the hands they're ahead of that they'd be getting value from if they knew how to size their bets).

Just as you said Poker Orifice, I play in micro and yes - it's crazy out there! I watched few games they play on bigger cash and they really do play much smarter and the bets aren't that crazy as in micro. However I'm now reading the "Mathematics of Poker" and again I come across a weird situation. This is just the begining where I am, pot odds and so, but there is a confusion for me - many poker sites ar saying that in order to work out pot odds in % I have to add the opponents bet to the current pot then add my own (calling) bet to the pot and THEN calculate the proportion of the whole pot (pot + opp. bet + me calling) against my bet. Ex.: pot 100, opp. bet 50, so if I want to know the odds in % I havet to add 100 + 50 + my call 50 = 200, and then I calculate that I have to call 50 to win 200, so it's 25% and my chance of wining must be greater than 25%. These sites strongly underline NOT TO FORGET TO ADD YOUR OWN BET TO THE POT!!!

But in th "Mathematics of Poker" In pot odds section is an example:

A holds: Ad Kd
B holds: 8c 9c
Flop: Ac Kh 4c

The pot is now 75$

Everybody knows each other cards. So A bets 30$ and what should B do???
Example says that chance of B winning is 17% (8 outs as Kc makes full house for A), BUT his pot odds are 28,5%. Now this is where I don't understand it as the 28,5% is clearly calculated as pot 75$ + A bet 30 = 105$, so B has to bet 30 to win 105$ and here we get those 28,5%. But why didn't they add the B call amount to the pot??? As I read in sites it has to be like -> 75$ + A bet 30$ + B call 30$ = 135$, so B has to call 30 to win 135$ and that is 22%... anyway B shouldn't call, but what about the process of calculation - is it like the sites say, or is it like this book says??? If it were just one lousy site, but I read it everywhere!!!

Okay, I am NOT a math guy - though I do basic calculations all the time I have NO desire to get it down to the decimal point, nor do I see a great need to do that. But if you do and you can then by all means go for it.

A great thing about this game is the varied styles and approaches that will dictate different formulas and paradigms to be a successful player. One book tells me suited cards mean nothing while another tells me they can make all the difference. I have not read this book but I do know it is fairly new on the market (2006). Your answer may lie in this snippet from the books description:

"Over the last five to ten years, a whole new breed has risen to prominence within the poker community. Applying the tools of computer science and mathematics to poker and sharing the information across the Internet, these players have challenged many of the assumptions that underlie traditional approaches to the game. One of the most important features of this new approach is a reliance on quantitative analysis and the application of mathematics to the game. The intent of this book is to provide an introduction to quantitative techniques as applied to poker and to a branch of mathematics that is particularly applicable to poker, game theory. There are mathematical techniques that can be applied for poker that are difficult and complex. But most of the mathematics of poker is really not terribly difficult, and the authors have sought to make seemingly difficult topics accessible to players without a very strong mathematical background."

Based on this I think you are going to find new ideas that don't necessarily mesh with a lot of "old school" thoughts in other books and websites. Quite a few guys taking on what Sklansky had established as standard play

The game is evolving so you are going to run into this more and more. Just find what works for you, adopt it then adapt it to profit.

It is like 'the book' says!

Are you sure? Because I've done the math in my head and this doesn't seem correct.

F.e.:
You're on a flush draw and lets say, for the sake of simplicity, that you win every 1 out of 3 times (implied odds not included).
The pot is $100.
Your opponent bets $50.
Now the pot is $150.
You stand to win $150 if you call his $50 bet.
150:50 = 3:1
3 times you win and once you lose = 4 possible outcomes. You need to win once every 4 times in order to break even.

Lets see if this is true:
Say you call and you lose 3 times. That is 3 * $50 = $150
The one time you DO win it's $200 - $50 which was already yours = $150

So, I don't think it's correct to add your own bet to the whole pot amount. After all, if you win your money back, you win nothing and you lose nothing, so why even bother with adding it to the equation

pretty sure that's what 'the book said'

I don't know that I'd argue with Bill Chen -

"Chen holds a Ph.D. in mathematics (1999) from the University of California, Berkeley. He was an undergraduate at Washington University in St. Louis triple-majoring in Physics, Math, and Computer Science, and also a research intern in Washington University's Computer Science SURA Program where he co-wrote a technical report inventing an Argument Game. He is currently in the Statistical Arbitrage department at Susquehanna International Group."

I don't know if he's right or wrong but I do know when it comes to matching mathematical wits with him I am totally unarmed. Hell, I don't even know what the above says.

Thin irony is somewhat lost to me through the haze of a wild poker session... meh

...well, I did my math too, and I still don't agree with it =) Damn I must be looking realllly stupid here arguing with guy who writes books.. I honestly do not like people like that, but let's look a bit at what I see.

I specially stated that the addition of your own bet is to get the odds right in PERCENT (%).

Lets say my chances of winning are 25% (1 out of every 4 times).

The pot is 100$ and opp. bets 50$
The pot is now 150$

So you say it's 150 pot and I have to bet 50 then it means I have to bet 30% of the pot and my chances are 25% so I shouldn't call, right?. As my chances of winning are smaller than the chances of pot so I will lose. But as dogmeat said actually we ar getting EVEN here. 1 time I win 150 and 3 times I lose 50 (1 out of 4 = 25%). But if we look at 30% and 25% it surely doesn't look even, now does it???

So in order to get it even in percent and to get the real situation we DO ADD our own bet to the pot.

So the pot would now be 200 and I have to bet 50 to get in, and that is 25%, and my chances of wining are 25%, now this looks even, and I know for sure that I will get even.

Now lets see another example:

My chances of wining are 40% (40 times out of 100)

The pot is 100$ opp bets 100$ = total pot is now 200$
I have to call 100$ to get in, so as you say I have to bet 50% to get in, but my chances are just 40% so I have to fold.

If I do add my own bet to the pot it turns out that I have to bet only 30% to get in, and my chances are 40%...and If we calculate we get = 40 times out of 100 I'll win 200$ = 8000$ and 60 times out of 100 I'll lose 100$ = 6000$. So actually I get a good profit.

I know, that if we just look at the numbers 200$ pot and 100$ bet and 40% chance we can calculate this at the begining and see that we are profitable, but we get 50% pot odds against 40% of wining if we do not add our own bet to the pot, and that is a bit confusing, especially when we have to calculate this every hand and we want to get it done and right more quickly.

So why would i want to calculate all this every hand??? The numbers above are pretty, but they may be way worse just to quickly get the calculation done. So I just add twice the opp. bet to the current pot and get the idea of how much % the bet is out of the pot and compare it to my chances of winning. And if the pot odds in % are now bigger than my chances of winning I KNOW FOR SURE I will lose money over long term. So I do not have to calculate all those numbers to get the exact EV and see if it really is or isn't profitably to call.

So this adding thing as I already stated in the first post (about this) is just to get the PERCENTAGES right.

Now please tell me what You think? Does this make sense? I think it does. I know this all boils down to the same result, but it is the question of perception and ease of estimation. Some people are better of with those 1:3 or 1/4. I'm not, I'm better of with %, and that is why I didn't want to believe that all those sites out there were publishing BS.

Congratulations! This thread is a dumpster fire!

Seriously go back to algebra kids. 150:50 is 3:1. A 25% chance to hit your draw is 3:1 ([25%+25%+25%]:25%). Is it really that hard to understand?

In high school algebra I sat behind my best friend who was the class genius at it. Come test time he would dip his right shoulder enough for me to see what he was doing.
So to answer your question - YUP!

Hmm. Fair enough. But anyways, when you have to call $50 to win $150, you cannot count that $50 as part of the pot, because its NOT YET IN THE POT! Pretty simple. The net gain is +150 when you win, and the net loss is -50 when you lose.

Can't believe there's a thread that's like 15 posts long discussing this.

That's good to hear because I actually understand that but definitely have no idea what Chen is talking about.

The books I've read don't usually give an example of like someone betting 30 into into a 190 pot. Usually it's half pot or slightly more. Maybe like 500 into a 1000 pot, thus giving you 3-1.

Most good players would charge much more for someone to hit their flush or straight if there are flush or straight possibilities, ie: giving a pot sized bet meaning it would be wrong for someone to call chasing a flush/straight. I'm unsure of where you read that example. They do show from extreme to the other, it's usually within the 2/1 or 3/1 range they do their hand examples or if it's multiway pot then they show like your example 8/1 or 10/1 etc. These do happen more often than you think!

Well, actually, calling a pot-sized bet with a FD or a SD on the flop is exactly a break-even move (Your pot odds are 1:2 and your chances of hitting are 1:2).

To DOGMEAT

=))) I don't know what are we arguing about. None of my examples are wrong. What you just wrote is exactly what I wrote. You say 50 bet in 150 pot is 3:1, well as you said yourself that's 25% and that is what I said too =) Wrong were those who say that a bet of 50 into 150 pot is a 33% bet as it actually is 3:1 = 25%. That is what I'm talking about. Please check my examples carefully and you'll see that I'm not wrong =) They see the adding of my bet to the pot as I would after that do the calculation again like 150 pot, 50 bet (thats 3:1 = 25%) and they think if I add 50 to the pot its like 200:50 = 4:1 = 20% NOOOO, I'm not doing that. As I said 100 times already and nobody wants to take that in account - IM WAY BETTER OFF WITH % SO IM CALCULATING IN % AND I DONT NEED NO Y:X, that is why I'm adding the bet to the pot to make the calculation obvious for ME (50 bet comparing to 150 is 33%, but that is wrong for poker here), I just add 50 and get 200, so my bet 50 is actually 25% of 200, and that is what it actually is 150:50 = 3:1 = 25%.

I'm not barking on you here and any other guys that try to help me, THANKS FOR THAT. But some comments are just stupid as c9h13no3 wrote, that adding bet to pot is wrong and in the same post he says that 150:50 = 25%. He just doesnt listen why am I adding the bet and that I get the same result, just the way I see it more easy for me.

Hmmmm.... Well, just to stir the pot a little more.... The above doesn't seem like it could possibly be right. First-off the odds for completing a FD and SD are not exactly the same. Second, what's the flop like? If its a 2-tone flop will your straight even be good if it completes, but board brings a third of the same suit? Seems like you ought to discount the SD outs a little bit. Finally, this is all only approximately correct (I think anyway, NOT a math person either), if you can be sure that by calling the PSB on the flop that you will get to see BOTH the turn and the river for that price, otherwise you are seriously over-paying for your draws. Anyway, just my .02. If there are any flaws here, please feel free to point them out. I just feel people over-pay FAR too often chasing draws by not taking the whole picture into account.

Yeah, I realized that recently. I have been paying people off on the flop thinking I have around 30% equity, when in fact most of the time I only wait till the turn card comes, and then give up.

Semi- Hijack here.

It is my position that all books, and forum discussions on the play of the game work toward providing the player with a solid basic understanding of the game.

They will never tell anyone the correct play at anytime. There are always alternative plays due to table dynamics. You bluff here, and fold decent hands there due to the dynamics of each hand.

That said, pot odds, implied odds, and the sort, are tools you use to make a decision. There are times when your gut will scream fold, and others when your gut instincts will scream raise. Sometimes your gut instincts are good, sometimes not.

I too am not on for 3 decimal odds. Gross approximations within 5% are reasonable (for me).

Much of the odds discussion will really depend on whether a player plays big ball or small ball poker. A big ball player is looking for those fabulous situations where over time he will double up, whereas a small ball player is looking for decent situations where he can increase his stack. They WILL play the same hands differently! Even if they play the same hand the same way, each will do it for different reasons, and different goals and rewards.

The thing with any odds calculations in poker is that they are based on incomplete info and assumptions. You may have outs so compelling that they demand action, but still won't win the hand. Your assumptions are gonna be off a significant % of the time.

So the thing is to understand that these odds calc's are at best correct, but NORMALLY are gonna be dead wrong a significant % of the time.

Most calc tables are developed using random hands vs your holdings. Answer this, how often do you play random hands, and how often do you really think your opponents are playing random hands. I do not have a good answer for either. I know I play more random hands now than I did before, but I like to think I have a reason, if only to occasionally hit big and confound my opponents.

If you act purely on playing the odds against random hands you will lose more than you expect because your villains are not playing all that many random hands.

Understand them, of course, but remember they are only one piece of the puzzle each hand is.

Could you please elaborate on that. It seems like an interesting concept. My winnings usually tend to come from a few big wins per session, while my losses are usually compounded over several small pots.

When you say they will play differently, what exactly are you referring to? Do you mean they play draws differently? Sets? Bluff less/more often?

I have started to respond here, but it is turning into a small book. If I can work it out, and edit it down, I'll post it.

Okay, thanks man! I'm sure a lot of people would like reading it.

EDIT: If it's that long, why don't you just open a new thread?

Since I sort of hijacked the original idea, I might start a new thread.

Since it started out with the line, 'I know it when I see it', I just started typing, and on editing I realized how screwed up my thinking was. Well maybe not screwed up, but not understandable. So I will revisit it over several days, and clean up both the post, and my thinking. Which relates to another thread where I mentioned that to teach a thing, one must understand the thing. Could be anything from Nucular (LOL) physics, to how to hammer a nail.

There is also the difference between small/big ball in tourney vs the same in ring. And while similar in many respect to the similar TAG/LAG thing, it bears some scrutiny.

The icon for it is unavoidably right smack dab in the middle of my desktop so I should be able to refresh it daily.

This doesn't seem to stop me from absolutely ignoring things. I have a note right over my pokerstars icon sitting there from over a week ago, and I still haven't done what I'm supposed to. I play poker daily though I just move the note, start my pokerstars client, and then move the note back, lol.