Long shots with odds

[jackfrost]

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By the Kelly Criterion, you should be willing to wager up to 1/43 of your bankroll on such a bet. This is a safer bet than playing a hand of poker from the start. If you are willing to do that, but not call here, your preferences are inconsistent.

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You can't say this is a safer bet than playing a hand from the start because you could have been an 80% favorite before the flop, and now you are looking at slightly better than even money. Preflop I would pass on all even or slightly better than even money situations. With pot odds your almost always in good shape preflop unless you play poorly.

I don't think I would risk 1/43 of my bankroll on a situation where the odds are 1:13 to 1:14. Thats practically like saying i'll go be the house at black jack and only have 43 bets. I could easily get busted by a lucky streak and being good at poker gives a player the luxury of making safer bets. If it was a much smaller fraction of my bankroll than it wouldn't be as much of a risk, but it would only be valuable if the bet was repeated thousands of times.

[pzhon]

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By the Kelly Criterion, you should be willing to wager up to 1/43 of your bankroll on such a bet. This is a safer bet than playing a hand of poker from the start. If you are willing to do that, but not call here, your preferences are inconsistent.

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You can't say this is a safer bet than playing a hand from the start because you could have been an 80% favorite before the flop, and now you are looking at slightly better than even money.

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You are confused. I was talking about deciding to play poker before you are dealt cards, not after you pick up AA. In one orbit, a solid winner might expect to win about 0.2 BB with a standard deviation of 5 BB. The Kelly criterion says in one model, you need to have a bankroll of at least 62 BB to play poker. (Optimal for geometric bankroll growth would be about twice that, about 125 BB, but below 62 BB you should not play.)

Playing LHE as a winning player is a more risky opportunity than getting 14:1 on a 13:1 gamble for one big bet. If you can't stomach that, you are under-bankrolled and should move down.

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Preflop I would pass on all even or slightly better than even money situations. With pot odds your almost always in good shape preflop unless you play poorly.

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Passing up those better-than-even-money situations is playing poorly.

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being good at poker gives a player the luxury of making safer bets.

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No, you don't get enough safer bets. This is why established winners can easily have losing sessions, often have losing weeks, and occasionally have losing months.

It may be very vivid when you get the nuts and value bet against a calling station, but that isn't very common. Being good at poker means recognizing those times you can make a crying call on the river that is right 1 time in 13 when you are getting 14:1 odds. Being good at poker means recognizing when you can make thin value bets and thin value raises, or when you can bluff to steal a 14 BB pot, even though you will fail 13 times for every time you succeed.

NLHE has less variance for the same win rate. Nevertheless, for a solid winner in a soft online game, playing 100 hands of NLHE is very similar to getting all-in with QQ versus AK for a full 100 BB buy-in.

[pzhon]

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NLHE has less variance for the same win rate. Nevertheless, for a solid winner in a soft online game, playing 100 hands of NLHE is very similar to getting all-in with QQ versus AK for a full 100 BB buy-in.

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Oops, I keep mixing up PTBB and BB. The above is off by a factor of two. Winning 10 PTBB with a SD of 50 PTBB is roughly like wagering a full buy-in as a 3:2 favorite, not 5:4.

[jackfrost]

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Passing up those better-than-even-money situations is playing poorly.

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Here is one example of many possible slightly better than even money bets I would pass on.
Say you are in the blind and you are against a poker player you have a good read on. He raises with AK but incorrectly plays his big pairs slowly trying to trick people or keep people in the pot. I'm sure you have encountered this guy before. So he reaises with AK and i'm in the blind with 73 offsuit. Just me and him, so the pot is laying me 1:3.5 but i'm only about a 1:2 dog. I clearly have the pot odds to call here, much better than 1:13 to 1:14, but I would be foolish to do so. You could also change this scenario into the simple button steal where your opponent would raise with any two cards and you are holding any mediocre hand, you are getting the odds to call most of the time, but most people wait for a better situation. With all of the disinformation in this game a good player will seek better situations.
There are thousands of more situations in poker that occur where i'm holding hands i don't play, but i have the pot odds to call. I don't thinking making this laydown and waiting for a better situation is a mistake.

If you play poker well, you can actually make a lot of bad hands break even or turn a small profit, everyday you play is going to be a roller coaster ride because you will be playing tons of hand and you really won't have a clue if you will turn a profit or break even that day. I've went through many phases in my poker career and have studied my hands extensively in pokertracker, I've realized that i'm better off not playing certain hands in early posistion, eventho they turn a tiny profit, i'm better off just waiting for them in better posistion and not having them lose money almost half the time.

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No, you don't get enough safer bets. This is why established winners can easily have losing sessions, often have losing weeks, and occasionally have losing months.


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I pass on longshots frequently and i've been professional for over a year. I've never had a losing week. I have had many losing days but I don't deal well with losing and being irresponsible (waste money like crazy) doesn't allow me to have a losing week, I might end up playing over 100 hours that week to get my money back and compensate for my time, but never a losing week. If I was playing in real life and only playing 30 hands an hour, the possibility of a losing week would deffinetly be more likely but playing 300 hands an hour and having a losing week would require for me to be on tilt.

I play tighter than SSH suggests, and this is me passing up on situations with +EV. If what you say is true about not being able to pass on my longshots, both Ciaffone and I would not be able to turn a profit, but this is clearly not the case. Ciaffone passes on these all of the time and is good enough to write a great book. It is possible that he is a losing player, but from what i've read Ciaffone probably wins more than he loses.

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NLHE has less variance for the same win rate. Nevertheless, for a solid winner in a soft online game, playing 100 hands of NLHE is very similar to getting all-in with QQ versus AK for a full 100 BB buy-in.

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Cmon now, your trying to say that when you play 100 hands at NL it is similar to a race situation. Maybe i'm just good, but when I play NL, especially in the game you described, i'm a huge favorite over my opponents. I am very patient and wait to catch them when I have the better hand. I do bet the pot and bluff frequently which is an action that has to be correct 50% of the time, but since it works somewhere around 75% of the time it is much better than even money. I'm not throwing my money around, i make educated decisions and to beat me the dealer has to set me up, someone has to make a mistake and outdraw me, be out played, or make a mistake myself. These things don't occur often which is why I win, if I was only taking races all day I would have a lot of losing days.

[The_Bends]

To refocus back on the oringinal post.

I think the most intersting issue brought up here is that implied odds are not a concrete as many people would like them to be. It's very easy to convince yourself that the guy will stack off if you hit your straight and yes you might be right. However simply calcuating how much you have to call as opposed to the pot + opponents remaining stack is a mistake. Lets say you are correct 90% of the time the 10% of the time you are wrong dramatically reduce your implied odds.

[jackfrost]

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To refocus back on the oringinal post.

I think the most intersting issue brought up here is that implied odds are not a concrete as many people would like them to be. It's very easy to convince yourself that the guy will stack off if you hit your straight and yes you might be right. However simply calcuating how much you have to call as opposed to the pot + opponents remaining stack is a mistake. Lets say you are correct 90% of the time the 10% of the time you are wrong dramatically reduce your implied odds.

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Calculating implied odds well is obviously something that isn't easy to do and it's a gamble just like everything else in poker. It's very similar to putting your opponent on a range of hands, but your simply putting him on a range of actions. I think if you calculate your implied odds, than take off a bet or two depending on the situation, you will be better off.

But I don't think calculating implied odds incorrectly is why Ciaffone says you should pass on long shots.

[bobman0330]

This play just can't be right in a limit situation. In big bet, it might be right to preserve your stack (if you can't pull more money out of your pocket for some reason). E.g., if i'm playing a PS NL game with 300 BBs, and a terrible player also has 300 BBs, I won't risk a lot on a long-shot with a small overlay, because I hope to get that money in later against the moron. In a limit game, it's always wrong. It's going to increase your variance and number of losing sessions, but it's just plain wrong to fold (barring reverse implied odds or something similar). Ciaffone is a smart player, but this obviously isn't his strong suit. There are only a certain number of variables here, and none of them justify Ciaffone's assertion. He's just wrong.