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Today we’re going to discuss one of the basic math concepts behind poker a bit more in depth and I’m going to use a hand from the Bay 101 Shooting Star WPT event to illustrate it. First off, much of the game of poker is based around probabilities, odds, and exploiting the edges that go with those. There is much more to the game than that, but one of the fi rst things we learn how to do as serious poker players is calculate pot odds.
Pot odds are fairly simple and, as most of you probably already know, it is simply the odds that the pot is laying you in any given situation to call. If there is $50 in the pot and the bet is $10 to you, your pot odds are $50 to $10, or 5 to 1. Without making things too complex yet, you’d only have to win one time out of six then to make calling there profi table.
Things get more complicated when we start to deal with future betting though; that’s where implied odds come into play. Implied odds are simply future bets you may be able to earn from your opponent if and when you make your hand. Implied odds are often used when playing pocket pairs for a set or drawing to a fl ush. You might be 7.5 to 1 to fl op a set, but even if your pre-fl op pot odds are only 2 to 1, the future bets you fi gure to earn when you fl op your set give you high enough implied odds to play the hand.
With the basics refresher course out of the way, what I really want to focus on in this article is something people don’t think about a lot, and that’s reverse implied odds. Reverse implied odds are, quite simply, the implied odds you offer your opponent when you make a second-best hand to him. As a simple example, often the reverse implied odds you offer other players very early on in deep-stacked tournaments when you have aces pre-fl op is very high: If your aces are cracked you will often end up losing a big pot, so the reverse implied odds you offer your opponents are signifi cant.
But how do we use reverse implied odds then? Do we fold aces pre-fl op early in tournaments? Of course not, that would be ridiculous. Reverse implied odds really come into play in situations where you hold a hand, that when made, has a higher-than-average chance of being second best AND is one that you will lose a lot of chips on.
Let’s use a hand from the Bay 101 Shooting Star as an example. At this point I had 25,000 chips and the blinds were 100/200. I had A-Q off-suit under the gun and raised to 550. “Miami John” Cernuto, directly to my left, cold called the 550, and an extremely tight player three to his left raised to 1,000 with 8,000 chips behind. It was folded back to me then. Now this seems like an extremely easy call at fi rst since I only have to call 550 into a 2,400 pot, or pot odds of over 4 to 1. However, the raising player was so tight I was 90% sure he had aces, and 100% sure he had A-A, K-K, Q-Q, or A-K. Against that range of hands, the only way I would feel comfortable with my hand is if I fl opped either two queens or K-J-T for the Broadway straight. Both of these scenarios are very unlikely, and won’t happen often enough to warrant calling when my pot plus implied odds only offer me 10,400 chips, since the tight player only had 8,000 chips behind.
For that to be profi table I would need to hit one of those two fl ops about 5% of the time, and it won’t happen near that often. However, if I called I would be offering my opponent tremendous reverse implied odds because with A-Q versus his range there are many times the fl op will come ace or queen high and I will make a second-best hand and pay him off a lot of chips. So, even though this looks like a very easy call, it is actually a clear fold knowing how tight our opponent is.
Let’s change the situation a little bit though. What if we had raised with 6-5 of spades or pocket sixes? In both of those instances we could easily call the 550 because in both cases when we hit our hands they are unlikely to be second best. They are hands that when we hit are very likely to be paid off by our opponent’s range and will rarely put us in a situation where we will lose a big pot with the second best hand. We will usually either just lose the extra 550 call or win our opponent’s entire stack when we hit.
So the next time you’re faced with a seemingly “easy” call pre-fl op, make sure you’re not only thinking about pot odds or even implied odds. Think about your hand and how likely it is to make a second-best hand as well, because the reverse implied odds you’re offering your opponent may turn what looks to be an easy call into an easy fold.
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