Theory of Poker: Chapters 5-7 Discussion

[theghost]

[ QUOTE ]
So would the odds of hitting it on the turn be 1/5.2? 47 divided by 9?

[/ QUOTE ]
47/9=5.22 so 9 goes into 47 5.22 times. 9 of the 47 are good for you, so 38 are bad.
Your odds are 1 to 4.22 (for a total of 5.22), follow?

[ QUOTE ]
So then how do you take that one step further to the river?

[/ QUOTE ]
You only consider pot odds for the bet at hand. If it's $1 to you and there are $5 in the pot, you can call (or raise for value, but that's another story). You can call because 5>4.22.

If the bet size doubles for the next street (turn), you might not have odds to call again ($2 to you, $7 in the pot would be a bad call because 3.5<4.11).

You might, however want to call this anyway if you are drawing to the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd nuts (or even on any unpaired board, for a flush draw with two in your hand). This is because you anticipate to get paid off when you make your hand (implied odds). Make sense?

[Smokey98]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
So would the odds of hitting it on the turn be 1/5.2? 47 divided by 9?

[/ QUOTE ]
47/9=5.22 so 9 goes into 47 5.22 times. 9 of the 47 are good for you, so 38 are bad.
Your odds are 1 to 4.22 (for a total of 5.22), follow?

[/ QUOTE ]
So you’re dividing the 38 by 9 and not the 47?


[ QUOTE ]
So then how do you take that one step further to the river?

[/ QUOTE ]
You only consider pot odds for the bet at hand. If it's $1 to you and there are $5 in the pot, you can call (or raise for value, but that's another story). You can call because 5>4.22.
[ QUOTE ]
If the bet size doubles for the next street (turn), you might not have odds to call again ($2 to you, $7 in the pot would be a bad call because 3.5<4.11).

[/ QUOTE ]
If you bet your $2 your opponent has to bet $2 as well making it $9 and pot odds of 4.50.

[MEbenhoe]

The way that Sammy uses is correct for determining a percent chance of hitting your hand, but be warned the less outs you have the more your the result of that equation will be off by. New York Jets way of determining them is a quick way to approximate your percentage chance, but I would never use this method for two reasons; the percentages are only close approximations and will be off by more and more the more outs you have, and his calculations calculate your chance of hitting on the next two cards rather than only hitting on the next card which are the odds you should be concerned with.

Overall though all these methods are somewhat pointless, because the percentage chance you have of hitting a hand means nothing, except for putting up numbers on poker shows on tv. You should only be concerned with odds. Heres an example to show you what I mean:

Lets say you have an inside straight draw on the flop, meaning you have 4 outs to make your hand. You're trying to determine if you can call a $2 bet with $16 in the pot. Using Sammy's method will tell you that you have a 10% chance of hitting your straight on the next card (you actually only have an 8.5% chance), and using New York Jets method will tell you that you 16% chance of hitting your inside straight by the river. Do these numbers actually do you any good? Not really. Plus its just as easy to figure out that you have 4 outs of hitting with 47 unseen cards so your odds of hitting are 43:4 or 10.75:1, so you don't have odds to call on this hand. Although Sammy's and New York Jets methods could cause you believe that you do have the odds. In all honesty I say use the way I just showed you, its not that hard of math and you're assured an exact answer that you can actually use.

I think people are just obsessed with percentages because they're not used to working with odds, but using percentages will do nothing but cause you to make mistakes in the long run.

[theghost]

[ QUOTE ]
So you’re dividing the 38 by 9 and not the 47?

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, basically. If we simplify the math a little, and round off the decimals we can look at it this way:
There are 5 groups of nine cards, one of these groups helps you and the other four don't. (9 cards help, 38 don't)
So 4 times you lose, 1 time you win.
You want that one win to at least make back enough to cover the 4 times you will lose, so you need at least 4 bets in the pot to your 1 every time.


[ QUOTE ]
If you bet your $2 your opponent has to bet $2 as well making it $9 and pot odds of 4.50.

[/ QUOTE ]
You're getting the right idea, but remember in the example that you are calling his bet, so his $ is already in the pot (5+2=7, 2 to you). If there are others left to act behind you, you have to anticipate what you think they will do.
If you are pretty sure they will call, you might call because you expect that money to be in the pot.
If you think they will raise, you might not want to call, because it will end up costing you double to see you card. (note that if they raise, you have to call because the bet size is the same and the pot is even bigger.)

[New York Jet]

No need for Ed, David, or Mason to verify the method. I'll show you the math and you can decide for yourself. Notice that Method 2 is much more accurate for the Turn percentages.

Method 1
FLOP
Outs Actual % 4% * Outs Difference
15 54.1% 60% -5.9%
14 51.2% 56% -4.8%
13 48.1% 52% -3.9%
12 45.0% 48% -3.0%
11 41.7% 44% -2.3%
10 38.4% 40% -1.6%
9 35.0% 36% -1.0%
8 31.5% 32% -0.5%
7 27.8% 28% -0.2%
6 24.1% 24% 0.1%
5 20.3% 20% 0.3%
4 16.5% 16% 0.5%
3 12.5% 12% 0.5%
2 8.4% 8% 0.4%
1 4.3% 4% 0.3%
TURN
Outs Actual % 2% * Outs Difference
15 32.6% 30.0% 2.6%
14 30.4% 28.0% 2.4%
13 28.3% 26.0% 2.3%
12 26.1% 24.0% 2.1%
11 23.9% 22.0% 1.9%
10 21.7% 20.0% 1.7%
9 19.6% 18.0% 1.6%
8 17.4% 16.0% 1.4%
7 15.2% 14.0% 1.2%
6 13.0% 12.0% 1.0%
5 10.9% 10.0% 0.9%
4 8.7% 8.0% 0.7%
3 6.5% 6.0% 0.5%
2 4.3% 4.0% 0.3%
1 2.2% 2.0% 0.2%

Method 2
FLOP
Same as Method 1.
TURN
Outs Actual % 2.2% * Outs Difference
15 32.6% 33.0% -0.4%
14 30.4% 30.8% -0.4%
13 28.3% 28.6% -0.3%
12 26.1% 26.4% -0.3%
11 23.9% 24.2% -0.3%
10 21.7% 22.0% -0.3%
9 19.6% 19.8% -0.2%
8 17.4% 17.6% -0.2%
7 15.2% 15.4% -0.2%
6 13.0% 13.2% -0.2%
5 10.9% 11.0% -0.1%
4 8.7% 8.8% -0.1%
3 6.5% 6.6% -0.1%
2 4.3% 4.4% -0.1%
1 2.2% 2.2% 0.0%


New York Jet

[MEbenhoe]

Thats all and good, but you're giving them useless numbers. If you can do math like that you can just as easily do the simple math required to figure out your pot odds rather than your percent of hitting, and with pot odds they're going to be accurate everytime, there's no being off by 2%.

Percentages all too often cause people to make mistakes as well. Too many people think 20% means you need 5:1 to call when you really only need 4:1 to call.

[New York Jet]

[ QUOTE ]
The way that Sammy uses is correct for determining a percent chance of hitting your hand, but be warned the less outs you have the more your the result of that equation will be off by. New York Jets way of determining them is a quick way to approximate your percentage chance, but I would never use this method for two reasons; the percentages are only close approximations and will be off by more and more the more outs you have, and his calculations calculate your chance of hitting on the next two cards rather than only hitting on the next card which are the odds you should be concerned with.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not so fast my friend. Method 2 will calculate the Flop percentages within 1% up to 9 outs and the Turn percentages within 0.4% up to 15 outs. If you have more than 15 outs on the Turn, but still need to calculate whether calling is correct, you should think about changing tables because your's is way too tight.

[ QUOTE ]
Overall though all these methods are somewhat pointless, because the percentage chance you have of hitting a hand means nothing, except for putting up numbers on poker shows on tv. You should only be concerned with odds. Heres an example to show you what I mean:

Lets say you have an inside straight draw on the flop, meaning you have 4 outs to make your hand. You're trying to determine if you can call a $2 bet with $16 in the pot. Using Sammy's method will tell you that you have a 10% chance of hitting your straight on the next card (you actually only have an 8.5% chance), and using New York Jets method will tell you that you 16% chance of hitting your inside straight by the river. Do these numbers actually do you any good? Not really. Plus its just as easy to figure out that you have 4 outs of hitting with 47 unseen cards so your odds of hitting are 43:4 or 10.75:1, so you don't have odds to call on this hand. Although Sammy's and New York Jets methods could cause you believe that you do have the odds. In all honesty I say use the way I just showed you, its not that hard of math and you're assured an exact answer that you can actually use.

[/ QUOTE ]

Two more points to make here.
1. I'll agree that determining the percentages for turn and river are not accurate when considering calling. They provide you with the incorrect effective odds. However, the method you suggest is also inaccurate. Your method does not take in to account the implied odds. A method I use is to split the difference between the Turn odds and the River odds. So in the case of an inside straight draw, I'll take the odds for both cards (5.1:1) and the odds for the last card (10.5:1), and average them out (7.8:1). So I will call an inside straight draw if I can get 8 to 1 odds. Now you must use a little common sense. If you are heads-up, 8 to 1 will not be enough, but 10 to 1 would be.

2. I could not agree more that percentages are not as useful as odds. What I suggest is memorizing the odds for calling the last card. Normally, you only need to know your odds with 9 or less outs. Remember the odds after the flop are slightly greater than after the turnl. Also remember that the odds for the turn and river are slightly less than half of the final card odds. If you have more than 9 outs, you should almost always call (or move to a looser table).

Here are some odds I use for after the flop to account for the implied odds. These are for a low limit, loose table. They would not work as well for a tight table.
9 Outs 3 to 1
8 OUts 3 to 1
7 Outs 4 to 1
6 Outs 5 to 1
5 Outs 6 to 1
4 Outs 8 to 1
3 Outs 11 to 1
2 Outs 17 to 1
1 Out 34 to 1

New York Jet

[MEbenhoe]

[ QUOTE ]

1. I'll agree that determining the percentages for turn and river are not accurate when considering calling. They provide you with the incorrect effective odds. However, the method you suggest is also inaccurate. Your method does not take in to account the implied odds. A method I use is to split the difference between the Turn odds and the River odds. So in the case of an inside straight draw, I'll take the odds for both cards (5.1:1) and the odds for the last card (10.5:1), and average them out (7.8:1). So I will call an inside straight draw if I can get 8 to 1 odds. Now you must use a little common sense. If you are heads-up, 8 to 1 will not be enough, but 10 to 1 would be.


[/ QUOTE ]

I merely ignored implied odds in order to prove the point in the difference in calculating odds vs percentages (that arent even accurate). The point still stands as being true; Percentages are completely useless in deciding how to play a hand.

[BigBluffer]

On pages 49-50, Sklansky is writing about the final hand of the 1980 WSOP Championship, where Brunson admits he made a mistake by not betting enough on the flop to make Ungar get out of the hand, allowing Ungar to pick up his gutshot straight on the turn and win the Championship.

Sklansky writes, "Brunson acknowledged he played incorrectly in betting $17,000 on the flop...he should have bet more than Ungar would have been able to call...even in terms of implied odds." $30,000 was in the pot pre-flop.

How much should Doyle have bet on the flop? How do you calculate that amount?

[DonkeyKong]

It's actually pg 57-58 in Theory of Poker...

Apparently, the equation is [(Doyles Stack) + (What Doyle has put In Already)] / (Doyles Bet) > Odds of a Gut Shot

So, (232,500 + 15,000) / X = 10.75x
= ~23,000

Or he needs to bet >23,000 to offer Stu an amount that makes him overpay the right price in terms of IMPLIED odds... call it $25k, or 80% of the pot...

But Doyle had top 2 pair and wanted a call from Ungar. In retrospect, he says he didn't bet enough but if $23k is the right math number, and Doyle wanted a call -- a little less than $23k seems logical. Maybe $20k, or 2/3 the pot.

Re. the $17,000; Stu said "I wouldn't have called too much more than that for a gut shot" so it seems virtually impossible to know what the right bet amount was... Something more than $17k but less than $25k as Doyle wanted a call... I guess you could argue anything from $20-25k... Doyle was behind in chips and flopped a big heads-up hand... betting $17k was tempting Stu but also risking his entire stack...

please, someone correct me if I am wrong but this is how I read it...