there is no such thing to pot commited. He can raise get the reraise then fold sicne he would be losing. Even if he folds and leaves himself with 50 cents, thats more than the 0 he leaves by pushing all in. If he gets aces next hand and double up, then flops the nuts hand after that, suddenly he is back up to about 2$ and can play again
I strongly disagree with this assertion!
Although in tournament play this assertion of "no such thing as pot commitment" is closer to being true, in a cash game it is a KEY CONCEPT.
Take the following example in tournament play: it is 6-handed with 5,000/10,000 blinds (no antes for easy math) and after posting you have 40,000 chips left in your stack (Stacks range from 2bb to 8bbs). You are in the big blind, and everybody folds to the button who pushes all in with 20,000 chips. You look down at 6 2 off suit. Although mathematically you are being offered 25,000 (25,000/10,000 odds to call (over 2.5/1 odds,) I argue that "pot commitment" should be disregarded here, even though you would have a positive cEV to call nearly any two cards the villain has! I think this because you likely will leave yourself in a situation where you will have only about 30,000 left in chips. Since fold
equity is such a huge part of end game play, your next push will give the bb 35,000/20,000 pot odds to call (nearly 2 to 1 obv)! this is a fairly automatic call for most players with nearly any two cards! If, on the other hand you had folded instead of calling the raise, you would have been left with 40,000 chips, giving your next push 45,000 /30,000 odds to call (1.5/1.) This slight difference in chip stack will significantly increase your FE on your next push, dramatically increasing the chance that the BB will be priced in to call. Thus, pot commitment is not an essential principle in tournament poker.
IN CASH GAMES THIS IS TOTALLY DIFFERENT!!!!
Cash games are completely based on pot odds and percentage to win the hand! You always need to pay attention to the odds being offered compared to where you think you stand (or more appropriately, compared to where you stand against all the
hands your opponent could possibly be holding.) To take the given example, taken hypothetically with your advice:
With 2 dollars in the pot, the flop comes 10h 9h 3h . Stacks at this point are $4.15 for the villain, and $3.80 for the pocket 6 hero. Opponent bets out 80 cents, hero raises to $2.4, leaving him with $1.4 left in stack with his pocket sixes. Opponent reraises all in. At this point there is 8.2/ 1.4 (nearly 6/1 pot odds.) With these odds one merely needs a 17 percent chance of winning the hand to call. Although it turns out the hero only had a 5% chance to win, there are other possible hands that the villain could have besides the KK with flush draw. For example overpair with no heart where it is a 9% chance for the 66 to win. Also just a high heart for the flush draw is the most important possibility! Against AK of hearts the hero is nearly a coinflip to win the entire hand!
Now once this information is calculated with the likelihood an opponent has the hands listed previously, a call is the correct play. I would say that the opponent has a 40 percent chance of overpair with no heart 20 percent change of having overpair with heart, 25 percent chance of having only a flush draw with no pair, 10 percent chance of having flopped a flush, and a 5 percent chance of the opponent having either an underpair or is completely
bluffing.
.5 percent chance of having overpair with no flush draw multiplied by .1 (chance of winning) = .05
.2 percent chance of having overpair with with flush draw multiplied by .05 (chance of winning) = .01
.25 percent chance of having flush draw with overcards multiplied by .5 (chance of winning) = .125
.1 percent chance of having flopped flush = 0 (drawing dead)
.05 chance of a complete bluff or underpair multiplied by .75 (chance of winning with underpair) = .0375
add (.05 + .01 + .125 + .0375) = .222
.222 > .17 A call here will have a +
expected value in the long run providing the percentages one assigns to each hand are fairly accurate. My percentages were done quickly, so the odds of the opponent having stronger hands could potentially be higher than I estimated, but my analysis didn't even factor in the chance of splitting the pot with a flush! Also .22 is significantly greater than .17, making the call the mathematically correct decision. THEREFORE THERE IS SUCH THING AS POT COMMITMENT.
The reason why one can rely solely on math in a cash game and not a tournament is that if you get felted in a cash game, you can always reload your chips!
