[DcifrThs]

Im seeing some mathematical and logical fallacies lately on this Mid High board so i thought id just take a second to clear up one that seems to be the most often made:

when you have a decision to make on the river, calling one bet vs. folding and you are 100% sure that it is a "close" decision (lets say + or - .05bbs) then the logic of "you should call b/c it only costs one bet whereas if you fold the pot its a huge mistake" simply does not hold.

I only bring this up b/c i see many people making this argument (and i think i might have in the past as well) but it is just clearly wrong.

The reason why it "seems" so right is the when you take into acct the perspective human beings have with respect to the time it takes to be satisfied, we'd rather be satisfied now than later unless the compensation for waiting is larger than the cost of waiting (opportunity cost etc.)

Assuming we play like a robot (no tilt, no poor decisions made after a pot costing mistake) then we should be indifferent between a -.05bb EV decision now and a cost of money discounted -.05bbEV decision later. But, since we are not robots, we make statements like "cost of calling is small vs. size of pot so you should call b/c the mistake size of folding is greater"

what this REALLY says is "id rather lose X*1bb now (where 0<=X<=1) than fold and have the possibility of losing the POT now" note that the cost of the fold is ZERObb in terms of expectation. so if calling earns you more than ZERO, i.e. the call has a positive expectation it should be made, REGARDLESS Of the time variation between periods of satisfaction.

basically, when a decision is close, it's close regardless of time and everything else so long as everything else doesn't affect the expectation of the decision.

So in these recent river folding examples, the cost of the call and the cost of the fold are close. Folding=0 cost and Calling=C cost. so C is close to 0. if C is positive, we clal and are rewarded the entire pot NOW when we win. if C is negative we cost ourselves C bbs.

therefore, i think the timing issues related to these calls is muddying people thinking.

Sorry for the long rambling non edited post but i just wanted to put that thought out there.

Barron