Are my odds better than they seem?

[R_Ellender]

Apparently I overestimated my opponent's ability to lay down a hand he thinks is beaten. He was surprised to still be in the tournament afterwards.

I've used similar plays many times with some degree of success, I just decided to use this example because it was one of my earliest that I remember.

If a bluff has a chance of succeeding that is higher than the odds the pot is giving me, I should make the play, whether it works or not. Sometimes I raise preflop with AA and still lose, but my raise was still correct because I put my money in as a favorite.

I could have easily saved the river bet, or maybe made a larger turn bet to induce a fold, but hindsight is always 20/20.

[Wake up CALL]

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Apparently I overestimated my opponent's ability to lay down a hand he thinks is beaten. He was surprised to still be in the tournament afterwards.


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Ya think?

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I've used similar plays many times with some degree of success, I just decided to use this example because it was one of my earliest that I remember.


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Results oriented thinking.


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If a bluff has a chance of succeeding that is higher than the odds the pot is giving me, I should make the play, whether it works or not.

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Obviously the odds were not sufficiently high to make the bluff.

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Sometimes I raise preflop with AA and still lose, but my raise was still correct because I put my money in as a favorite.


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Finally a correct statement although it has no relevance to what you did which was calling a preflop raise with a poor hand out of position.


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I could have easily saved the river bet, or maybe made a larger turn bet to induce a fold, but hindsight is always 20/20.

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It seems not to be so since you still seem to think you played at least a portion of this hand correctly.

[R_Ellender]

I don't see how you can call my thinking results-oriented and then follow it up by basing your criticisms on the results of my play. If I said I went all-in with AA, got called by KK, and my big pair was cracked, would you criticize my play because it didn't turn out successfully on that one occasion?

If I bet half the pot, and there's a 50% chance my opponent will fold, the bet has positive expectation. No, it won't work every time, the same way AA doesn't hold up every time. However, in the long run, I will make money.

Over 100 plays, I win the pot 50 times(+50) and lose a bet that is half the pot 50 times(-25). That comes out to 25 pots gained over 100 plays. +EV.

And yes, I called with a "poor hand" out of position, but your hand is only one of many variables affecting your situation. There are times when the cards are irrelevant because of other situational factors. If this game was just about the cards, the only losers would be the ones that played anything less than the nuts. But the game is obviously not just about the cards.

Think about it... you raise with AK utg and get one caller. The flop comes A76, you check, and your opponent bets. You raise, your opponent folds. You checkraised, and he folded. It's easy to see that if your hand was 27o in this situation, you still would have taken the pot down unless you had some serious tells when you were bluffing. So is it incorrect to open the pot from UTG with 27o? Theoretically, yes, it's a garbage hand. But since your hand is only a small piece of the puzzle, other factors can be more important than your hand's lack of strength.

Take Dan Harrington's squeeze play with 26o in the 2004 WSOP as an example. His play on the hand had nothing to do with his cards and everything to do with his situation.

From now on, if you have nothing positive to post, please save yourself the trouble of typing any more negative comments you may have. This site is a place for people to seek advice and share ideas, not to criticize each other because you and I don't share the same viewpoints.