Why I hate pot

Samango

Samango

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Well, there is a good reason why the total that you have invested in a pot is not taken into account when reckoning pot odds — because it's irrelevant. If you fold, you're still not getting any of that back.
 
wilpinsi

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In fact I can never do more the odds count
I believe that when we play with all the odds and summations have more chances of reaching our goal
poker needs to be studied thoroughly and be able to manage all their variances, and reach a denominator (win)
 
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ph_il

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I hate pot.

Marijuana, that is. It stinks.

I don't have a blog.
 
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Joewinning

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You should avoid pot until it becomes legal.
 
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ph_il

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OP, your blog on pot odds is a bit off.

1. Pot odds are not just crucial when you behind in a pot. You also need to work out pot odds when you are ahead as well to make sure you aren't giving your opponents correct odds to call draws.

2. With a flush draw, you don't have 25% to hit it by the river. It's actually much more at ~35% (rounded). If we use the rule of 4, 9 x 4 = 36%, which is pretty close to 35%, but why higher than the 25% you've given. However, we only use the rule of 4 and calculate the chances of the flush hitting on the turn or river if there will be no more betting after the flop. Otherwise, we use the rule of 2 and calculate the odds off hitting on flop-to-turn. And then again on turn-to-river.

3. The odds of hitting a flush on flop-to-turn is ~19% and from turn-to-river is ~19.5%. Using the rule of 2 for each, it's 18% which is, again, very close.

4. In your example: Player has a flush draw on the flop and has to call a 2K bet to win a pot of 10K (8K in pot + villains 2K bet). This is giving the player 5:1 pot odds on a call. Since player is on a flush draw, and villain still has money behind, player calculates the odds of hitting their flush on the flop-to-turn, which is 4.22:1. Given 5:1 odds, this is profitable call. The turn is a brick and the pot is now 12K. Villain bets 4K and player has to call 4K to win a pot of 16K, getting 4:1 to call. Since the odds of hitting a flush on the turn-to-river is 4.11:1 to call, the player should fold since it will not be a profitable call in the long run.

Yes, there could be some argument for calling with implied odds, but that's something different and I want to just focus on pot odds.

5. You make a comment about pot odds not entering your thinking in the scenario and you're more concerned with opponents stack size; or rather, effective stack size but I think your mistake is not using the two together because they both go hand-in-hand.
 
teepack

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Actually I do let pot odds enter into my thinking, but it's not my No. 1 consideration. It's just one of many factors that go into my thinking when I'm going to chase something. I'm still working on trying to figure out how to balance using pots odds when I think my opponent may be a big pot odds believer. I've found that most people simply call anything when chasing a flush, especially if it's the nut flush. And I have found a lot of people who will also call just about anything when chasing a gut shot straight. Those are the ones you can exploit pretty big.

Last night I was playing in my Pub Poker league and a guy had a nut flush draw (he had a suited pocket with the ace) after the flop twice, and another guy went all-in both times after the flop. Both times the guy with the nut flush called and hit his flush on the river. I don't think either of those situations in pot odds would have dictated a call (the first time he had to call 16,000 into a pot of 22,000 (if my math is right, that's ~ 42%) and - to me, more importantly - he was covered. The second time the pots were something similar but this time he had the other guy covered.
 
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johnnygadget

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If everyone avoided it until it became legal then there would be the argument that it should remain illegal because nobody used it. It should be legal so everybody who supports the legalization should get some and speak up.
 
AlfieAA

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A pot of teeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeea
 
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