your read vs. pot odds

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If the same question was asked for a 2/4 or 10/20 or 200/400 game instead of .02/.04 would you be able to answer? Not to be a jerk, but this is the microlimits forum and to hear well at that level making the right decisions doesn't matter just seems ironic.

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heh.... nah your right, sorry to the op, was fairly wrecked last nite. i think my keyboard needs a breath tester [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[PokerSlut]

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my general rule is that I give players credit unless I have seen them do something which indicates that they are likely to bluff raise. If you have no read, I would fold if the pot odds aren't there, and then watch that player in later hands to find out how they play

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I am the exact opposite. In low limit games, I assume they are donks until proven otherwise. This has worked out very well for me in evaluating marginal situations.


Remember that if the pot is big, you don't have to be correct very often for this strategy to pay off. Thus, it is almost always a good idea to show down a decent hand instead of folding when it is a close call, IMO.

[bozlax]

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Personally I don't bother to use reads at .5/1, because people show me J high reguarly on a paired board after calling me down in a small pot.

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Uh, dude, hate to break it to you...that's a read. It's a bad one, but it's a read.

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IMHO one should do more tables instead.

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Really depends on what your goals are. If you want to be able to play 5/10 some day (or 20/40 live) you'd better learn to read hands, and you can't do that 3- or 4-tabling. If you're going to play .5/1 and 1/2 for the rest of your life to bonus-whore online, then 4-tables and PA-HUD should serve you well.

[bozlax]

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heh.... nah your right, sorry to the op, was fairly wrecked last nite. i think my keyboard needs a breath tester [img]/images/graemlins/confused.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

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It's not fair to the newbies, dude! I mean, Wook, Jax, you can TELL when those guys are drunk (oops...I mean, "whun thoos gues ar drnkued").

[Aaron W.]

I'm a bit disappointed that there are a lot of blanket statements which seem very anti-intellectual and don't really address the question that OP was asking. Everyone voting in favor of ignoring reads is playing suboptimally. They may all be donks at .02/.04, but they don't all donk the same donk.

To OP's question, I'll go through this methodically. Let me first lay down some simplifying assumptions:

- You will call the turn raise (which means that you think you have pot odds to chase)
- Villain will always bet the river (generally true)
- You will not raise the river (this keeps us from arguing higher order questions, such as you hitting your hand, raising, but donk 3-bets you)
- When you improve, your hand is best (otherwise there's another layer of probabilities involved, which makes things much more complicated)

There are basically two lines to take:

A) Call on the river UI/Call the river if improved
B) Fold on the river UI/Call the river if improved

What are the possible situations?

1) You were ahead on the turn and have the best hand on the river
2) You were ahead on the turn, but villain has the best hand on the river/you fold
3) You were behind on the turn and have the worst hand on the river/you fold
4) You were behind on the turn, but improved to the best hand on the river

So in all, there are 8 things that can happen (the four situations each have two possibilities, depending on whether you call or fold). The goal is to determine the odds of each of these situations happening and to compute the amounts won/lost for each situation. Once you know this, you compute the EVs by weighing the various probabilities and pick the better play (I'll explain this below).

Since it's really really complicated, I'll make a contrived example:

The pot has $15 after you call villain's check-raise. It will cost you $1 to call villain's river bet.

Villain's check-raise is probably trouble, but he could be aggro-donking. You think there's a 95% chance he's got you beat and a 5% chance that you're still ahead.

When you are behind, you've got a 10% chance of catching up. When you are ahead, villain has a 10% chance of catching up to you.

The EV is computed very simply:

(Probability of the turn situation) * (Probability of the river situation) * (Amount won/lost)

For example, let's suppose we are in situation 1 and use plan A. There's a 5% chance of being ahead on the turn and a 90% chance of being the best on the river. When you call his river bet, you win $16 ($15 in the pot plus villain's $1 bet). The EV of this situation is (.05)*(.9)*(16) = 0.72.

Let's look at the EVs for Plan A (the number below corresponds to the situation above):

A1) (.05)*(.9)*(16) = 0.72
A2) (.05)*(.1)*(-1) = -0.005
A3) (.95)*(.9)*(-1) = -0.855
A4) (.95)*(.1)*(16) = 1.52

The net EV is the sum of these values (since they've already been weighted): EV(Plan A) = 1.38

We do the same for plan B. This is a little bit complicated because you are only calling the river if your hand appears to improve. This means that you fold winning hands sometimes. So when you're ahead, you only call 10% of the time when you improve. Otherwise you fold and have 0 gain/loss as a result:

B1) (.05)*(.1)*(16) = 0.08
B2) (.05)*(.9)*(0) = 0
B3) (.95)*(.9)*(0) = 0
B4) (.95)*(.1)*(16) = 1.52

So the EV of calling the turn and folding the river UI is 1.60. So in this case, you do better folding UI than calling down.

Of course, you don't actually get the opportunity to do this calculation in your head at the table (besides the time constraint, you simply don't have accurate probabilities). I do want to point out that if you think you have a 10% chance of being best when he check-raises, you should call! (EV(Plan A)= 2.06 and EV(Plan B) = 1.60.) This is why you shouldn't underestimate the value of reads at ANY level.

I suggest you play around with the chart a little bit. What happens if you have a stronger draw (flush draw comes in 20% of the time). What if you have a longshot to improve (2-outs with your pocket pair to river a set). Change the pot size to 12 and see what happens. All of this will help develop your intuition on how sure (or unsure) you need to be to pay off these rivers. If you also allow yourself to raise, Plan A improves a little more than Plan B.

[idxox]

Thanks for taking the time to type that out, i could mess with this for a couple of weeks and still not figure out lots of things...But i think what you typed out is the mathematical key to a lot of questions that i was having. I just now need to mathematically work out a lot of the situations that I find myself in and figure out the best play.

The interesting thing is that if you have any read on the opponent as a loose/agressive player, then your percentages of having the best hand on the turn shoot up so dramatically that you practically HAVE to show him a hand.

But didn't you forget about the option of immediately folding after he check-raises (perhaps this only applies in extremely small pots)? I will mathematically figure out some things.

Good post.

Thanks everyone else for replying as well.

[Aaron W.]

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The interesting thing is that if you have any read on the opponent as a loose/agressive player, then your percentages of having the best hand on the turn shoot up so dramatically that you practically HAVE to show him a hand.

But didn't you forget about the option of immediately folding after he check-raises (perhaps this only applies in extremely small pots)? I will mathematically figure out some things.

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That option always has 0 EV (you never win anything, and you don't lose anything). The reason that the two lines have positive EVs is because you have very good pot odds to call on the turn when you're behind. Throw out those odds, and folding to the check-raise is definitely an option.