A different way of looking at pot odds.

[Colombo]

I seriously confused myself after thinking about this. Can anyone help me out?

Lets start with a situation.
Player A and player B are playing heads up, and they each have 100 chips.

Player A holds A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img]J[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] and the flop comes 2[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 6[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] K[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] The pot currently contains 0 chips.

Player A is first to act, and bets 99 of his 100 chips. Player B raises all in for 1 more.

Now, Player A is asked to call 1 chip into a pot of 199. He is getting 199-1 on his money, so obviously he should call for the flush draw.


So, by pot odds, player A made the right call, but were his odds really 1-199? Were his true pot odds 1-1? Because, obviously, if he had checked and player B bet 100, he would be getting incorrect odds to call, but the situation I described is basically the same thing.


Anyways, I'm sure I confused alot of you with this, but I guess my question is, can pot odds be determined by all of the bets of that betting round, or just the single bet you are dealing with.

[AaronBrown]

The two situations are different. Once A bets 99, that money belongs to the pot, not to him. When B raises, A's only choices are fold or put in 1 chip. If he puts in the chip, he can win 200 chips. Unless he is more than 99.5% sure that he's lost, he should call.

If A checks and B puts in 100, then A's choice is to risk 100 chips to make 100 chips. Now he should bet with a 50% chance or better of winning.

Pot odds focus your attention on the essentials: what you have to put in, what you can win if you do, and what the probability of winning is. Who put the money in, when, where, why or how, are irrelevant.

[sully4321]

once that bet of 99 goes in, he is what we call "pot committed"... we call it this BECAUSE it affects his pot odds for the rest of the hand

[Ole16]

[ QUOTE ]
once that bet of 99 goes in, he is what we call "pot committed"... we call it this BECAUSE it affects his pot odds for the rest of the hand

[/ QUOTE ]

Ehhm so you saying if his stack was 10000000 chips, he would still be pot committed after a bet of 99 chips?

[x vikram]

Quote:

So, by pot odds, player A made the right call, but were his odds really 1-199? Were his true pot odds 1-1?

Answer: When player A put his chips in the pot they are no longer his in the sense that it is now the Pots.

Pot Odds equation: $/Chips in POT (divided by) $/Chips to CALL.

Players B Pot odds when it was his turn to act, after the raise by player A was 1:1. He raised by 1 causing player A to be faced with the followng choices:

Fold if he thinks his chance of winning is less than 199:1

Call if he thinks his chances of winning is more than 199:1

Raising is not an option.

[henrikrh]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
once that bet of 99 goes in, he is what we call "pot committed"... we call it this BECAUSE it affects his pot odds for the rest of the hand

[/ QUOTE ]

Ehhm so you saying if his stack was 10000000 chips, he would still be pot committed after a bet of 99 chips?

[/ QUOTE ]

Depends on what the raise is to him, if it's his million chips to the other guys 100 and you bet 99 with absolutely nothing, you are pot commiting yourself unless you can 100% put him on a hand that has you drawing dead. Sure you could fold to the 1 chip raise and have loads of chips to play with, but it would be wrong for the pot odds. So yes, even in your completely out of context example you are pot commited if you want to play the hand right.

[SpeakEasy]

[ QUOTE ]
Once A bets 99, that money belongs to the pot, not to him.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is all you need to remember for future conundrums like this thread...