Regarding Implied Odds Against Small Stacks

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sundizzel

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I've been going through the CardsChat 30-day poker training course, and yesterday covered implied odds and reverse implied odds, as well as how to play draws. These chapters were super enlightening and improved my deep-stacked decision-making tremendously--the results were immediately visible after putting the principles into practice.

That being said, I ran into some problems as it got towards the mid-to-late periods of the tournament because I still had a decent stack (approx. 100 BB), but most of the other players in the tournament were sitting at more like 30 BB. Therefore, when I was running implied odds calculations for a lot of my drawing hands like low pairs and gutshot straight draws, the math didn't justify a call because the effective stack was their smaller stack, even though I had plenty of chips to be drawing with. Ultimately, I opted not to continue playing the drawing hands, and I felt like my ability to accumulate chips slowed down incredibly and that I couldn't seem to win my premium hand flips against short-stack all-ins, resulting in a slow loss of chips I had worked so hard to get earlier in the tournament.

So my question is... what is the correct play style given such a stack distribution? Am I still okay to play drawing hands if I'm not getting the implied odds because my stack is big enough? Or am I pretty much forced to start playing only premium hands and hope we win flips against all-ins?

Thanks in advance for any advice, and good luck on the tables!
 
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karl coakley

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sundizzel said:
I've been going through the CardsChat 30-day poker training course, and yesterday covered implied odds and reverse implied odds, as well as how to play draws. These chapters were super enlightening and improved my deep-stacked decision-making tremendously--the results were immediately visible after putting the principles into practice.

That being said, I ran into some problems as it got towards the mid-to-late periods of the tournament because I still had a decent stack (approx. 100 BB), but most of the other players in the tournament were sitting at more like 30 BB. Therefore, when I was running implied odds calculations for a lot of my drawing hands like low pairs and gutshot straight draws, the math didn't justify a call because the effective stack was their smaller stack, even though I had plenty of chips to be drawing with. Ultimately, I opted not to continue playing the drawing hands, and I felt like my ability to accumulate chips slowed down incredibly and that I couldn't seem to win my premium hand flips against short-stack all-ins, resulting in a slow loss of chips I had worked so hard to get earlier in the tournament.

So my question is... what is the correct play style given such a stack distribution? Am I still okay to play drawing hands if I'm not getting the implied odds because my stack is big enough? Or am I pretty much forced to start playing only premium hands and hope we win flips against all-ins?

Thanks in advance for any advice, and good luck on the tables!
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Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.

You are letting the math get in the way of your game. Generally i consider if i have the pot odds to continue a draw. Simply use the rule of 4 and 2. Multiply your outs by 4 on the flop and by 2 after the turn. For a flush 4x 9 outs =36 percent chance making my flush over the next 2 streets. After the turn its 2x 9 outs or 18 percent chance. These are NOT exact, but close enough in the middle of a hand

Now, if i just have the River, i only have about a 20% of getting there. So, 1in 5 chance. So the proper odds should be around 5-1 to call.

If there is 5-6k in the pot and someone bets 1k you are getting the proper odds to call.

How often does that happen?

How often are you getting less than a 1/2 the pot bet? This would make that poor odds for any flush draw, yet its called all day long.

The odds are important long term, if you bet and call with poor odds you will end up being a losing player In the course of a tournament you are going to have to make calls you didn't have the odds for.

I personally look at where I'm at in the tournament, how much of my stack it would take to call, and where i would be if i lost. You are going to have to make calls you don't like uf you want to win, just pick good spots.
 
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HunPokerRoll

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Thank you for learning from this as well
 
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