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.

[pzhon]

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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.


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That is ridiculous. You are a 2:1 dog if you are all-in. You aren't all-in, you have a much lower chance to be ahead on the flop, you don't know your opponent has exactly AK (rather than AJ or KQ or 77), and you have a positional disadvantage. So, what do the hot-and-cold odds have to do with anything? This is not an example of a better than break-even proposition you turn down.

If you really expected to get back 1.5 SB from the 4.5 SB pot for your 1 SB investment, passing that up would be horrible.

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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.

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Your experience disagrees with that of many people here. Do you think all of the professionals who have had much longer losing streaks are just worse players than you? Or do you just put in many more hands each week?

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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.

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I see, you "manufacture" winning weeks. It is much, much easier to do that than to play a normal amount and happen to be ahead 52 weeks in a row. In fact, losing players can manufacture very long winning streaks before losing a huge amount.

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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.


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Yes, for a winning player it is a favorable race situation that you can repeat over and over again. Playing 100 hands in a soft online NL game is like playing chess for 20 BB followed by a fair coin-flip for 100 BB. That seems to be the consensus in the NL forums.

Some days you flop lots of monsters and get paid off, and your decent hands hold up or your opponents charge you the minimum. Some days you get few playable hands, you miss flop after flop and get raised, no one pays you off when you have a hand, and you make a lot of expensive second-best hands.

Maybe you are underestimating the normal variance of playing poker. This may be a sign you have been running unsustainably well, or that you have a selective memory.

[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.

[jackfrost]

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That is ridiculous. You are a 2:1 dog if you are all-in. You aren't all-in, you have a much lower chance to be ahead on the flop, you don't know your opponent has exactly AK (rather than AJ or KQ or 77), and you have a positional disadvantage. So, what do the hot-and-cold odds have to do with anything? This is not an example of a better than break-even proposition you turn down.

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This was an extreme example to make a simple point.
I thought I said I had a good read on the player, he is the type to not raise with KQ or 77 or AQ.
Say you sat out for a while and posted a blind on the button with the 73 and the same guy raised and you have a good read on him. Both the player in the blinds are very tight and you doubt they will protect there blinds, so most likely you will se the flop 2way and your odds now are 1:4.5 and you are a 2:1 dog if you went to the river. So now your odds are better and you have posistion. Like you said this isn't an all in scenario, so your odds of flopping a pair are 1:2 and he has to miss the flop and the turn. I'm not exactly sure of the math here, but it's probably near even money if not better.
That example isn't very good because how often can you really know exactly what your opponent is holding.

Say you take a maniac who raises with any low or mid suited hand but slow plays his bigger hands. You hold a mediocre hand like k8 offsuit on the button which is most likely better than his, do you 3bet him or wait for a better hand? You clearly have the odds to take the K8 in against this guy because it's most likely the best hand, but I don't even play the K8, I wait for a hand that has a better chance of holding up.

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Your experience disagrees with that of many people here. Do you think all of the professionals who have had much longer losing streaks are just worse players than you? Or do you just put in many more hands each week?

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What do you mean my experience disagree's?
I rarely play 100 hours a week to manufacture a losing streak. But if you are playing 30 hours a week and playing 4 - 8 tables and you have a losing week, you might start questioning your play. When you play so many hands online losing days are rare, let alone a losing week. Anytime i've been in a situation where i'm in any jeopardy of having a losing week, usually my game is off due to stress from life.

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Maybe you are underestimating the normal variance of playing poker. This may be a sign you have been running unsustainably well, or that you have a selective memory.

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lol... Yeah i've been running hot for the last year playing 5,000 to 10,000 hands a week. I hope my luck can hold out so I can pay my bills.

When you say that playing NL is like being 1:14 to 1:13 just doesn't make since to me. My odds of winning are much better than that at any game I sit in unless it is filled with pro's. You figure a player who is slightly better than average would have odds like that.
I could be wrong, maybe i really only have like a 55% chance of winning and i'm just luckier than everybody else. But if you did the math on what actually happens, most good players will have many many more winning sessions than 55%. I play NL a bit different than most people here I guess, I determine what my oponent has than base my actions off of this, most of my profit comes from out smarting the other players, not from races.

[jackfrost]

My original thoughts to Ciaffone's statement made me stop reading his book before I made it to the second page. I thought it was very stupid. After I went back and read the whole book I realized that he was far from stupid, there has to be some sense to his philosophy.

I'm almost certain i've read another book stating something similiar but i've read so many that I can't recall which one mentioned it. I know someone else has probably read the same book or essay so please point me to it if you have.

[pzhon]

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Your experience disagrees with that of many people here.

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What do you mean my experience disagree's?

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Search the forums. You will find plenty of threads where long-term winners talk about hitting 200-500 BB downswings, or break-even stretches of tens of thousands of hands. Yet, you say you have been playing professionally for a year, and haven't had a losing week.

Is your standard deviation much different from 15 BB/100? After 5,000 hands, about 1 time in 6, you should be 2 BB/100 below your average. About 1 time in 40, you should be 4 BB/100 below your average. (For 10,000 hands, those would be 1.5 BB/100 and 3 BB/100 below your average.)

For those who play $0.50-$1, that might not mean a losing week. It would for just about anyone playing $15-$30.

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Maybe you are underestimating the normal variance of playing poker. This may be a sign you have been running unsustainably well, or that you have a selective memory.

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lol... Yeah i've been running hot for the last year playing 5,000 to 10,000 hands a week. I hope my luck can hold out so I can pay my bills.

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No, I expect that you have had losing streaks and are conveniently forgetting them.

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But if you did the math on what actually happens, most good players will have many many more winning sessions than 55%.

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Nothing I said contradicts that. Most sessions are longer than 100 hands, and that the distribution is not literally a coin-toss. However, the point is that poker is made up of decisions that are not much safer than repeatedly backing QQ against AK for a full buy-in.

Maybe you are special, and for you alone, poker is as risk-free as chess. In that case, my comments are about poker as played by everyone else.

You might not think you are gambling much, but so much depends on whether your opponents hit the flop, and whether your opponents decide to bluff when you have a monster versus when you have king high.