Something I should know, but don't.

[cold_cash]

I'm not a math guy. In fact, I'm the least "math inclined" you know. I can plus and minus, that's about it. Heh.

I do even worse with probabilities.

Anyway, I played a hand tonight that went something like this:

Dude raises, I 3-bet AK, next guy cold-calls, etc..

The flop comes down TK3, Dude bets, I raise, cold-caller calls, etc..

Turn is another King, Dude bets, I raise, cold-caller 3-bets, I call down and lose to 33, blah blah.

Anyway, one of the table coaches goes off on this guy for calling 3 bets with 33 and it gets me to thinking.

I'd like one of you guys to explain to me in simpleton terms about how implied work when you hold a small pair and are faced with multiple bets before the flop.

I know that my initial investment is "X" bets, so I will need to recoup "Y" bets in order to make the call profitable. Something like that, right? Will I have to make up ~7 times my initial investment? Is it that easy?

This might belong in the beginner's forum, and I'm sure it's super simple, but I'd like to once and for all have someone dumb it down enough for me to grasp it. Thanks.

[bottomset]

I thought the general consensus was 10/1 implied odds with a small pair, since a set wins ~75% of the time, so you need an extra 2.5/1 perbet above the 7.5/1 that you are to flop the set

[Aaron_]

Against likely opponent holdings, pokerstove shows 33 is actually only a 3.14:1 dog to the river. You'd need to make up about 9.5 bets plus whatever you pay off to see a showdown every time (not likely).

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

36,056,313,216 games 81.204 secs 444,021,393 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 24.1050 % 23.97% 00.14% { 33 }
Hand 2: 28.2905 % 27.14% 01.15% { 88+, ATs+, KQs, QTs, AJo+, KJo+, QJo }
Hand 3: 47.6045 % 46.45% 01.15% { JJ+, AKs, AKo }

[detruncate]

This says you need to make up 9.5x the amount you put in. You're working in units of 3 SBs if you spend 3 pf (as per the OPs example), which means you need to make 14.25 BB to break even given Mr. Stove's assumptions.

[detruncate]

Hi cold_cash.

I'm also pretty mathematically retarded and found it funny to see so many math and science guys in the "getting to know you" thread. Luckily most of this stuff isn't that complicated.

Start with your odds to hit a set, which are about 7.5:1 against. If you had 100% equity, you'd only need to make 7.5x the amount you had to spend pf to break even. Unfortunately this isn't so. Bottomset estimated 75%, though I don't know if that includes your chances to boat up and win that way.

In any case, spending multiple bets pf hurts your implied odds tremendously because though you may earn more via implied odds on average when there's lots of pf aggression, you're unlikely to increase your expectation by the same multiple of bets you put in. You don't necessarily expect to make 2x more post flop on average when there was 1 raise pf than if it was unraised, or 3x more when it was raised and 3-bet pf, of 4x more just because it was capped. You might sometimes, but this is not neccessarily so.

It's also why we can play so many hands from the SB -- we're working in units of 1/2 SB, which makes it easier to recoup our investment since our opponents are going to be spending 2x and 4x that amount with each bet they make post flop (1 SB on the flop, 1 BB on the turn).

I find it helpful to think it terms of units, which consist of the total amount we put in pf. We need to make somewhere in the neighbourhood of 9-10x our unit on average.

Basic enough?

[Catt]

[ QUOTE ]
Will I have to make up ~7 times my initial investment? Is it that easy?

[/ QUOTE ]

Not quite. First, there is room for argument on whether the right multiplier is 5 , 6, 7, 8, 9 or X; and that argument is affected by just how big your initial investment must be (completing in the SB or calling 3 cold).

Let's assume we need 9:1 to make putting money in with 22 a profitable play. We're not going to get 9:1 immediately in most cases, so we rely on implied odds -- we might be getting 4:1 immediately on our initial investment when we should be getting 9:1. The wisdom of our call getting 4:1 depends on whether we can make up the additional 5x our initial investment when we hit (getting us to the 9:1 we are targeting). So we need to make up 5x our investment those times when we hit.

If "x" is 1/4th a BB (i.e., completing the SB in a 1/2 structure) then it seems pretty easy to make up -- we need only win 1.25 BBs on later streets to make the initial call OK. If "x" is 3 SBs (i.e., cool-calling a cap in the BB) then we need to make up 15 SBs or 7.5 BBs to make the call OK. In a limit game, it gets harder and harder to make up multiple BBs than it does to make up only a few.

Basically this summarizes the common observation that with very speculative hands we want to get in cheap to see if we hit -- the cheaper we get in, the less in actual bets we need to make up post-flop -- and the number of bets we can reasonably expect to make up in a limit game is finite.

[Aaron_]

[ QUOTE ]
This says you need to make up 9.5x the amount you put in. You're working in units of 3 SBs if you spend 3 pf (as per the OPs example), which means you need to make 14.25 BB to break even given Mr. Stove's assumptions.

[/ QUOTE ]

No, the 9.5 number comes from the 3 bets you need to make up for every time you lose (3 x 3.14 = ~9.5 SB). This, again, does not account for all of the bets you would need to call down every time to see the showdown, nor the bets you would gain if you hit your hand.

To simplify it, we'll assume that 33 is allin PF and getting only 2:1. We're losing 1.14 bets every time we make this call. But the assumption is so diluted that it's not even worth mentioning.

I'll end this worthless rant right here.

[detruncate]

The chance of winning UI is also there too, and you're right that we're unlikely to see the river most times we don't connect. Whatever. Rant away. I just wanted to make sure that we thought about the amount we were putting in since I didn't intend to make another post... then I made one anyway since it was better than doing dishes.

[Aaron_]

[ QUOTE ]
The chance of winning UI is also there too, and you're right that we're unlikely to see the river most times we don't connect. Whatever. Rant away. I just wanted to make sure that we thought about the amount we were putting in since I didn't intend to make another post... then I made one anyway since it was better than doing dishes.

[/ QUOTE ]

[img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]

Yeah - we could make a program with some set rules for each holding and figure something close to what we're actually getting. But it's just so much easier to listen to SSHE when it tells us to fold 33 when it's raised and reraised in front. I always err to the laziness, and I salute you for putting off the kitchen -- wp.

[detruncate]

[ QUOTE ]
...and I salute you for putting off the kitchen -- wp.

[/ QUOTE ]

Your support is misplaced. I was afraid to get into any sort of trouble/have medical issues since there was a pretty good chance it would lead to aghast news crews jostling for shots of the scared, hazmat-suited crew sent to condemn my apartment.

Bad eating + squalor + enough empties to keep me in alcohol for a while if I can motivate myself to take them to the recycling centre. I feel like I'm regressing to strange alternate (and definitely unhealthier) version of my early 20s. Next step seems to be to grow some evil twin facial hair. Kill me now.