Effective Odds, Pot Odds and Implied Odds

[mike4bmp]

A little confused?.......
If you've calculated your effective odds and decided that you have +EV to call to see the turn but your card doesn't hit the turn then to see the river do you recalculate the pot odds to the immediate odds that are given at the turn?
And if so...if you were not getting the correct immediate pot odds on the turn to see the river is this when you calculate implied odds?
This seems to be what I am understanding from the readings in TOP. Thanks!
-Mike

[AaronBrown]

I'm not quite sure I followed you, but I think you're right.

To be completely correct theoretically, you always compute your river action first, depending on whether or not you hit, because that affects your implied pot odds for the turn. However, in practice you can often simplify.

It's usually true, for example, that if you have positive EV for the turn, you'll have better positive EV for the river. The pot will be larger relative to the bet limit on the river, and there will be one less card that doesn't help you in the deck. That's not always true, of course. In no-limit you don't know what the river bet will be, and you could have multiple opponents raising. Some situations are complicated, with cards that can help you but also different cards that can help your opponent. The decision depends on how sure you are of winning if you make your hand, how obvious your hand is, and how likely your opponent(s) are to fold in various situations.

But to a first approximation, if after the flop it is positive EV to call the hand to the river, you don't really have to calculate the turn and river separately. It's better to do a simple calculation approximately correctly than a complicated calculation completely wrong. And you need to save attention for watching opponents and thinking strategy.

[benkahuna]

What game are you playing and what betting structure?

NL and PL are games with much higher implied odds. That's why people play suited connectors so much in them--in holdem at least.

Limit is more about pot odds. It's much harder to make your hand and have an opponent still put a lot more money in the pot once you do (it will happen, but you have less control of pot size than in PL or NL).


Pot odds are the now and immediately forseeable future. You have pot odds to take off another card or to go all in on the flop and see two cards.

Effective odds and implied odds involve estimating future costs of seeing a hand through and the potential reward for doing so. Implied odds allow you to effectively increase the pot odds for a particular situation. If you flop your set, will you get a lot more money from your opponent? If so, you can play most pairs even lacking the 1/8 chance of flopping a set. Effective odds effectively lower the pot odds for a particular situation. If you're not getting pot odds for a str8 draw for a draw from flop to turn, but you have it from flop to river, you probably should take into account the cost of playing the turn. Effective odds in this case would involve calling on both the turn and the river versus the chance of making your draw on the river. If you know you can call, but will face a raise behind you, effective odds would take into account this extra cost other than the immediate action on your part.

Reverse implied odds calculate the future extra cost if your opponent makes a hand. If you raise with AA preflop and they flop a set, you might have to put a lot of money in to see the river, enough so that your opponent got proper odds for trying to flop a set. It's basically your opponent's implied odds.

Redraw odds involve the odds you can achieve the best hand but lose when your opponent draws to a better one.

In a perfect world or contrived scenario of omniscience, you can calcuate all of these odds and prescribe the most profitable or least costly play. In the real world, you can only calculate pot odds--the rest you have to estimate.


Once you start applying these concepts to your gameplay, they make a lot more sense. At least, they did for me. I think most people that have played a decent amount have an intuitive sense of these ideas.