Correct Pot Odds vs Survival Right Now

[Onaflag]

Making general statements about pot odds without specific hand information is dangerous. Viewing your pot odds the same as ring play is wrong. If you're deep stacked and have favorable implied odds in that if you hit your draw you could do some serious damage to one or more opponents, then by all means, go for it if the loss of a few chips won't otherwise hurt you on the times you don't hit.

And you will not hit more often than you hit. That is important in STTs. In ring games you get to play essentially forever and dig back into your pocket when you run short on chips. STTs have a definite end, a finish, a conclusion, el finito, el dono, fat lady singing. You cannot reload chips.

So if the loss of chips will be significant enough to leave you in a position where you are now a favorite to lose the STT, you have committed a serious error in judgment regarding pot odds.

Your thinking is that in the long run you will win more tournament chips than you lose. And you're right. You will. Unfortunately, we cannot cash out tournament chips. If we could, well, it just wouldn't be a tournament.

Think about it with a different twist. You're on a pure nut flush draw and you absolutely need to hit it to win because you know your opponent(s) are currently ahead and even pairing one of your overcards won't help. Somehow you've made it to the turn and have correct pot odds to make the call even though, should you lose, your chip stack will become "the shorty." You’re slightly worse than a 4-1 dog to hit but are getting 6-1 from the pot. Fold.

Even that is a general scenario and may get criticized here, but the fact is, you're going to lose in that spot 4 times and win once. Even the one time you win out of 5, there's no guarantee you'll go on to win the tournament, but let's say you did in fact do just that. Every time you win in that spot, you go on to win the tournament. In a $55+5 you have invested $300 to play five tournaments. The one time you win, on Stars, you'll win $247.50.

Your nut flush draw, with sufficient pot odds, has cost you $52.5. Clearly -EV.

Onaflag............