QTo favorite over 2's

51/49 is very different than 50/50. It is a bigger edge than the house has for the pass and don't pass lines in craps. In some situations you would make the same decision regardless of whether you are 49%, 50%, or 51% to win a hand, but slight edges matter a lot, and the cummulative effect of always being on the good or bad side of slight edges is huge, but variance really obscures the value of edges in the short run.

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thanks for the pokerstove.com... i realize that casinos thrive on 51/49. i was thinking more of showdown where you don't even know what the true % is. i think we tend to think around 50/50. i don't tend to sweat 50/50 vs. 51/49 (or 52/48) when i don't even know my opponents exact hand. worst thing about casino games is that you know what the odd are.

wouldn't 50/50 always be o.k. for a showdown from an EV point of view as there will always be folded $$$ in the pot and your opponent is putting in $$$$$.

[fnord_too]

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51/49 is very different than 50/50. It is a bigger edge than the house has for the pass and don't pass lines in craps. In some situations you would make the same decision regardless of whether you are 49%, 50%, or 51% to win a hand, but slight edges matter a lot, and the cummulative effect of always being on the good or bad side of slight edges is huge, but variance really obscures the value of edges in the short run.

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thanks for the pokerstove.com... i realize that casinos thrive on 51/49. i was thinking more of showdown where you don't even know what the true % is. i think we tend to think around 50/50. i don't tend to sweat 50/50 vs. 51/49 (or 52/48) when i don't even know my opponents exact hand. worst thing about casino games is that you know what the odd are.

wouldn't 50/50 always be o.k. for a showdown from an EV point of view as there will always be folded $$$ in the pot and your opponent is putting in $$$$$.

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There are actually spots where you should fold a favorite. Here is an extreme case: Last 3 of a tourney, you have 49.9K, villain has 50K, 3'd guy has .1K. 3'd guy folds, villain pushes and shows you AK, you have 66 (say blinds are 500/1K), you should fold your favorite here (assuming normal tourney payout structure), because you lose cashing EV by calling.

Another interesting thing you can do is to determine the face up value of a hand, that is, if you flipped your hand face up and everyone played optimally if you pushed, there is an effective stack size where you should push vice fold.

In practice, you are right, your estimation error is large compared to the equity percentages most of the time, but not always. You can also do things like figure in folding equity. e.g. you can determine how often you need to win if called to make a push +EV (from a chip perspective, it gets complicated when you are looking at a cashing perspective in tournaments). These exercizes are very beneficial and go a long way to quantifying the value of aggression.

I think I have rambled way off topic here, I'm not quite sure where I was going with all of this.

[jonnyd]

not just 4 of a kind but say board comes 8844x

you are screwed

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I think I have rambled way off topic here, I'm not quite sure where I was going with all of this.

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yeah, i know the feeling!!!! thanks for your help!!!