your read vs. pot odds

[idxox]

I'm currently multitabling 3 tables of .02/.04 and doing very well.

However, fundamentally speaking, I'm having a difficult time weighing the two opposing concepts of pot odds and your read as to if you think you have the best hand and how that influences your further action.

Basically the problem I'm running into is when you get raised or check-raised on the turn with top pair with a great kicker, and you assume you're behind, let's say you give yourself 3 outs to hit the best two pair, but the pot is only lying 10:1...yet there is a chance that you actually do have the best hand, and this guy is playing overagressively (you don't know because you have no read on him, because you're playing 3 tables).

In this situation would you call then show it down because the pot is big and you don't have a read on him yet? Or would you play conservatively and fold the possible best hand?

At what point is the pot "too small" for you to make this call and showdown?

[John Paul]

2 Points

1) You actually have 5 outs, you could get trips if your bottom pair gets a third card, so 10:1 is enough.

2) Your second question is tougher. I never played .02/.04, and I don't multi-table due to computer limiations. However, my general rule is that I give players credit unless I have seen them do something which indicates that they are likely to bluff raise. If you have no read, I would fold if the pot odds aren't there, and then watch that player in later hands to find out how they play

You could do it like so:

On an uncoordinated hand he is lets say 30% likely to have to a weaker pair, 20% likely to have topset, 20% likely to have bottomset, 20% likely to have an overpair.

That would mean you win 30% of the time.

BTW in my opinion you don't need reads at this level. Just play straightforward and solid. Call down big pots, fold small pots (most of the time) if you aren't sure.

i have never folded a hand at .02/.04

reads arent important....

[RatFink]

If the same question was asked for a 2/4 or 10/20 or 200/400 game instead of .02/.04 would you be able to answer? Not to be a jerk, but this is the microlimits forum and to hear well at that level making the right decisions doesn't matter just seems ironic.

Personally without reads I tend to lean more towards the action meaning what it is intended to and then calculate my odds based on that. Adjusting if it is a big pot and calling down more liberally then.

[Greg J]

You might not have the money necessary to invest in the proper tools (PT and PA) to provide you with HU stats to give you some read despite multitabling. But in the the situation you just described you are probably okay just calling down. The chance you will improve + the chance you are actually ahead (given the poorer competition) probably make calling down okay.

[benkath1]

Multitabling is fine, and at that level, I think reads are just as important as at higher levels. Obviously there's going to be a lot of laggy action, and you want to win the max so you can move up, but if you are playing .02/.04 to 'learn' the game, you shouldn't play 3 tables. Just play one and concentrate on reads untill they are second nature. Then open up another table. When I moved to 2/4 I decided to play one table until I had a note on every player at the table before I opened up the second. That means watching every showdown and noting what kind of hands you are seeing and how they were played.

As far as your hand, I'd probably just call down. You have top pair.

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
However, fundamentally speaking, I'm having a difficult time weighing the two opposing concepts of pot odds and your read as to if you think you have the best hand and how that influences your further action.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you're confusing things here. The question of how likely you are to have the best hand (or draw to the best hand) impacts whether you are able to bet and raise for value. You only worry about the pot odds when you're pretty certain you don't have the best hand and you want to know if you can call.

In the example you gave TPTK, raised on the turn, you know you have a very good hand (i.e. you are not pretty certain you DON'T have the best hand, as in you're holding KQ, the flop comes Q83r, the turn comes A and you get raised), but you're not certain enough to raise (a turn raise or c/r being a pretty good show of strength, but it could be top-pair-worse kicker, or top pair that just picked up an OESD) you should generally call down without a read.

Does this make any sense at all?

Oh, and not for nothing, but if 3-tabling prevents you from having reads on your opponents then you shouldn't be 3-tabling. You should at minimum be using the available tools to get stat reads, or 1-table and use your eyes and brain.

Well, I said in MY opinion. Personally I don't bother to use reads at .5/1, because people show me J high reguarly on a paired board after calling me down in a small pot.

IMHO one should do more tables instead.

[RatFink]

[ QUOTE ]
Personally I don't bother to use reads at .5/1, because people show me J high reguarly

[/ QUOTE ]

Is that ALL people at the table or just a lot of them? Since you are at the table I assume you wouldn't show J high, so that means not ALL .5/1 players will. Therefore having a read on which will and which will not are useful, regardless of the level.

[ QUOTE ]
If the same question was asked for a 2/4 or 10/20 or 200/400 game instead of .02/.04 would you be able to answer? Not to be a jerk, but this is the microlimits forum and to hear well at that level making the right decisions doesn't matter just seems ironic.

[/ QUOTE ]

heh.... nah your right, sorry to the op, was fairly wrecked last nite. i think my keyboard needs a breath tester /images/graemlins/confused.gif /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[PokerSlut]

[ QUOTE ]
my general rule is that I give players credit unless I have seen them do something which indicates that they are likely to bluff raise. If you have no read, I would fold if the pot odds aren't there, and then watch that player in later hands to find out how they play

[/ QUOTE ]

I am the exact opposite. In low limit games, I assume they are donks until proven otherwise. This has worked out very well for me in evaluating marginal situations.


Remember that if the pot is big, you don't have to be correct very often for this strategy to pay off. Thus, it is almost always a good idea to show down a decent hand instead of folding when it is a close call, IMO.

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
Personally I don't bother to use reads at .5/1, because people show me J high reguarly on a paired board after calling me down in a small pot.

[/ QUOTE ]

Uh, dude, hate to break it to you...that's a read. It's a bad one, but it's a read.

[ QUOTE ]
IMHO one should do more tables instead.

[/ QUOTE ]

Really depends on what your goals are. If you want to be able to play 5/10 some day (or 20/40 live) you'd better learn to read hands, and you can't do that 3- or 4-tabling. If you're going to play .5/1 and 1/2 for the rest of your life to bonus-whore online, then 4-tables and PA-HUD should serve you well.

[bozlax]

[ QUOTE ]
heh.... nah your right, sorry to the op, was fairly wrecked last nite. i think my keyboard needs a breath tester /images/graemlins/confused.gif /images/graemlins/frown.gif

[/ QUOTE ]

It's not fair to the newbies, dude! I mean, Wook, Jax, you can TELL when those guys are drunk (oops...I mean, "whun thoos gues ar drnkued").

[Aaron W.]

I'm a bit disappointed that there are a lot of blanket statements which seem very anti-intellectual and don't really address the question that OP was asking. Everyone voting in favor of ignoring reads is playing suboptimally. They may all be donks at .02/.04, but they don't all donk the same donk.

To OP's question, I'll go through this methodically. Let me first lay down some simplifying assumptions:

- You will call the turn raise (which means that you think you have pot odds to chase)
- Villain will always bet the river (generally true)
- You will not raise the river (this keeps us from arguing higher order questions, such as you hitting your hand, raising, but donk 3-bets you)
- When you improve, your hand is best (otherwise there's another layer of probabilities involved, which makes things much more complicated)

There are basically two lines to take:

A) Call on the river UI/Call the river if improved
B) Fold on the river UI/Call the river if improved

What are the possible situations?

1) You were ahead on the turn and have the best hand on the river
2) You were ahead on the turn, but villain has the best hand on the river/you fold
3) You were behind on the turn and have the worst hand on the river/you fold
4) You were behind on the turn, but improved to the best hand on the river

So in all, there are 8 things that can happen (the four situations each have two possibilities, depending on whether you call or fold). The goal is to determine the odds of each of these situations happening and to compute the amounts won/lost for each situation. Once you know this, you compute the EVs by weighing the various probabilities and pick the better play (I'll explain this below).

Since it's really really complicated, I'll make a contrived example:

The pot has $15 after you call villain's check-raise. It will cost you $1 to call villain's river bet.

Villain's check-raise is probably trouble, but he could be aggro-donking. You think there's a 95% chance he's got you beat and a 5% chance that you're still ahead.

When you are behind, you've got a 10% chance of catching up. When you are ahead, villain has a 10% chance of catching up to you.

The EV is computed very simply:

(Probability of the turn situation) * (Probability of the river situation) * (Amount won/lost)

For example, let's suppose we are in situation 1 and use plan A. There's a 5% chance of being ahead on the turn and a 90% chance of being the best on the river. When you call his river bet, you win $16 ($15 in the pot plus villain's $1 bet). The EV of this situation is (.05)*(.9)*(16) = 0.72.

Let's look at the EVs for Plan A (the number below corresponds to the situation above):

A1) (.05)*(.9)*(16) = 0.72
A2) (.05)*(.1)*(-1) = -0.005
A3) (.95)*(.9)*(-1) = -0.855
A4) (.95)*(.1)*(16) = 1.52

The net EV is the sum of these values (since they've already been weighted): EV(Plan A) = 1.38

We do the same for plan B. This is a little bit complicated because you are only calling the river if your hand appears to improve. This means that you fold winning hands sometimes. So when you're ahead, you only call 10% of the time when you improve. Otherwise you fold and have 0 gain/loss as a result:

B1) (.05)*(.1)*(16) = 0.08
B2) (.05)*(.9)*(0) = 0
B3) (.95)*(.9)*(0) = 0
B4) (.95)*(.1)*(16) = 1.52

So the EV of calling the turn and folding the river UI is 1.60. So in this case, you do better folding UI than calling down.

Of course, you don't actually get the opportunity to do this calculation in your head at the table (besides the time constraint, you simply don't have accurate probabilities). I do want to point out that if you think you have a 10% chance of being best when he check-raises, you should call! (EV(Plan A)= 2.06 and EV(Plan B) = 1.60.) This is why you shouldn't underestimate the value of reads at ANY level.

I suggest you play around with the chart a little bit. What happens if you have a stronger draw (flush draw comes in 20% of the time). What if you have a longshot to improve (2-outs with your pocket pair to river a set). Change the pot size to 12 and see what happens. All of this will help develop your intuition on how sure (or unsure) you need to be to pay off these rivers. If you also allow yourself to raise, Plan A improves a little more than Plan B.

[idxox]

Thanks for taking the time to type that out, i could mess with this for a couple of weeks and still not figure out lots of things...But i think what you typed out is the mathematical key to a lot of questions that i was having. I just now need to mathematically work out a lot of the situations that I find myself in and figure out the best play.

The interesting thing is that if you have any read on the opponent as a loose/agressive player, then your percentages of having the best hand on the turn shoot up so dramatically that you practically HAVE to show him a hand.

But didn't you forget about the option of immediately folding after he check-raises (perhaps this only applies in extremely small pots)? I will mathematically figure out some things.

Good post.

Thanks everyone else for replying as well.

[Aaron W.]

[ QUOTE ]
The interesting thing is that if you have any read on the opponent as a loose/agressive player, then your percentages of having the best hand on the turn shoot up so dramatically that you practically HAVE to show him a hand.

But didn't you forget about the option of immediately folding after he check-raises (perhaps this only applies in extremely small pots)? I will mathematically figure out some things.

[/ QUOTE ]

That option always has 0 EV (you never win anything, and you don't lose anything). The reason that the two lines have positive EVs is because you have very good pot odds to call on the turn when you're behind. Throw out those odds, and folding to the check-raise is definitely an option.