Look for Implied Odds, not Pot Odds When Calling

July 2nd, 2009

Raising middle pairs over limpers in the early stages (regardless of buy-in) is somewhat risky. You are likely to get better long term value from set mining cheaply. In the early stages, loads of players are correctly playing for implied odds. A five times raise is not a big hit to their stack and you mostly just don’t narrow the field enough. You end up most times trying to decide whether to continuation bet into an overly large pot with over cards on the board and it all gets a bit too much like hard decisions for me. Why not open raise, but once there are limpers, avoid attacking them when its deep stacked and when the blinds are very small.

You also can’t forget about the 2:1 odds. So if the pot is now one.5BBs pre flop, there is 1 limper, that makes it 2.5BBs. You now decide to raise to three big blinds, making the pot five.5BBs and the limper (assuming everyone else folds) has to call 2BBs to see a flop with 5.five big blinds in it. So he is getting nearly 3:1 on his call.

You have to consider the fact that you’re likely to never be worse than a three to one under dog pre-flop. However there is a problem. Maybe even more than one problem.

Firstly your problem is bet-ability of a marginal hand. This could mean rags facing off against ace king. The flop comes down 5 J Q. You are in front by quite a long way, but can you put much money into this pot? What about the continuation bet? But what if you just bet into the pot? What happens when he calls? Do you fire again on the turn? How deep a hole are you going to dig for yourself with your bottom pair hoping that it is good?

What about if you have 33 pre flop? With three big cards flopping, you can theoretically assume your opponent miss the flop, but you are stuck with how much to bet since it missed you as well?

So yes, you had correct odds pre flop, if you could get to showdown for something approximating that pre flop investment. But in deep stack situations you can’t. You still have 3 betting rounds before you get to fifth street.

But that leads to the second problem. You are out of position and that’s not good poker tournament strategy. What this also means is that when you do actually hit the flop, the pots will be smaller. You will also lose more chips, because your opponent can bet you off a better hand because he has position.

If you think about it, in deep stack play, you shouldn’t be concerned with pot odds too much. I am only ever looking at implied odds.. i.e. what is the size of my chip stack and my opponents chip stack. My calling range is rather wide if this bet represents 5% of my stack or less. If they have a big pair and I have little connectors, I am okay with that. If they have AA, and I want to be playing my little cards. When it gets higher, like ten percent, I am more likely to fold. But in all of that the only thing I am thinking about is the size of the bet I have to call compared to the effective stack.

I might have 56s and be up against AK. But unless I make and OESD, Flush draw or 2 pair or better, I will be surrendering pretty much every pot on the flop especially if I am OOP. This may be an opportunity to play passively checking and calling if you haven’t had a low pair.

If you notice in Every Hand Revealed, Gus Hansen frequently berates himself for calling early position raisers with trash when he is in the BB. Understandably, these regrets come about as soon as you see the flop which invariably are difficult to play. Gus can look at his opponent for tells, and after all his is The Great Dane. We don’t have physical tells and we are not Gus. Importantly also, our opponents are not Gus’ opponents. It’s also important to know if your opponent can get away from a top pair, or are more willing to let it ride.

So for what its worth, I’d recommend not falling too much in love with pre flop pot odds in deep stack situations. Hey, you may play the hand anyway, but look at it from an implied stand point, not just pot odds. You have to know how to calculate poker odds when getting into hands like this becuase it may very well determine your long term success in tournaments. Just knowing Poker rules are not enough to win, you need strategy too.

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