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Old 09-29-2004, 05:17 PM
Boopotts Boopotts is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2003
Posts: 71
Default Re: Drawing Hands and Pot Odds

Whuh? With one card to come, your odds are about 5:1 to hit. Assuming you'll get paid off in at least one spot (and maybe with a raise), you can call. Also, there's no law saying your opponent has to be betting a king, so a nine or a ten might do the trick.


As an aside, a better way to play this hand would be to raise the flop. Shutting out the limper isn't a disaster, since the chances are he was going to fold anyway (ragged flop, small pot, etc. etc.). If the turn is a brick you can either check or bet (I'd almost always bet) and then make a determination on the river as to what you ought to do if you miss again. On the balance, however, raising the flop here will show you a greater profit than flat calling when there aren't any players behind you (I know there's 1 player in this case, but you get the idea.

Re: Pot odds. The dirty little secret about hold 'em is that the concept of pot odds isn't very helpful. A much better idea is to look at your effective odds, which is a way of expressing the relationship between how much it's going to cost you to see your hand through vs. how much you expect to win if you end up dragging the pot. Assuming the player in the blind would pay off a raise if you hit on either the turn or river ( a big if, but let's go with it for now), you stand to win 50$ if you hit your hand. Your net investement, should you just call the turn and river, is going to be 15$. So you're getting 3.3 to 1 if you take the hand to the river. Yeah, sometimes he'll fold if you hit your hand and raise, but then also sometimes you'll hit a nine or ten and it will be good, or you'll be able to bluff the turn or the river, etc etc. On the balance I think you'll see that the 'intangibles' weigh in in your favor; especially since you have position on the lead bettor.
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