Pot Odds
For example, a player we will call Steve raised from the button to 800 when the blinds were 150/300 at a ten-thousand table. The tightest player in the game then moved all-in from the small blind. And when I say tight, I mean really tight, snug, buttoned down, had hardly played a hand... all signs pointed to super tight. The player had a total of 3275, so that sent 2475 back to Steve. Steve asked for a count, stared at the pot, even said out loud, "So there is 1900 in the pot and I have to call 2475 more?"
Now notice Steve is not even getting 2 to 1; 2 to 1 is the mark where you start considering an automatic call against most players because, with fi ve cards to come, two undercards are a 2 to 1 dog to two unshared overcards. However, against a super-tight player you would not even auto call getting 2 to 1. Steve went through some mathematical calculations in his head that actually took quite some time, then shrugged and said. “I guess I have to call no matter what,” and threw his money in the pot… with A-4 off-suit.
Now here is the problem: A-4 off-suit against pairs 5-5 through K-K is slightly worse than 2 to 1. Against a better ace (and let’s face it, most of them are better), A-4 will be a 3 to 1 dog (that fact is particularly problematic for the call here). The only hands A-4 does okay against are 3-3 and 2-2 (hands our hero is unlikely to hold) and K-Q or worse (again, hands unlikely here). But even if we allow for K-Q and K-J suited or unsuited, against the range of hands our hero has, A-4 is much worse than a 2 to 1 underdog (our hero actually had A-10, though that is irrelevant since the math is theoretical).
Now, I don’t know exactly what kind of math Steve was doing but I came up with odds only slightly better than 1.3 to 1. That sounds like a big money loser if you are on average worse than 2 to 1 when you call. In fact, you would be losing nearly half your call. That is how not close the decision is. So what went wrong here? Well, I can only really guess since I am not a mind reader; I wasn’t privy to the mathematical machinations going on inside of Steve’s mind, or the minds of the other players I have seen make this same mistake in the last month or so. But I have a pretty strong suspicion that it is a clear case of when a little knowledge might hurt you more than no knowledge at all.
People watch poker on TV and see players counting pots down. They notice that when pots are quite large, players are much more likely to call. They also see situations where players (especially pros) will call all-in bets before the fl op without even looking at their cards, announcing as they do, “I guess I have to call anyway so I might as well not look.”
Here is where the viewer, armed with this little bit of knowledge, goes wrong. The decision to call should be based on more than pot size and the fact that the call is an all-in. I mean these two factors have something to do with it, but not in a vacuum. You must also compare the size of the pot to the size of the call, and then compare those odds to the likely price of your hand against your opponent’s range of hands, knowing that the all-in bet guarantees you get to see five cards.
Phew! That was a mouthful. But that is the point. A call should not be based on something as simple as “I see a lot of money in the pot and know I won’t have to pay more.” The pot is only relevant in comparison to the size of the call since that gives you your pot odds. If $2k in the pot and you have to call $400, you are getting 5 to 1; but if you have to call $2k you are only getting 1 to 1. Those numbers matter because they determine how often you must win in order for the call to be profi table. In the fi rst case you only have to win a little over 17% of the time to make the call profi table (that would make it an automatic call). Compare that to the second case in which you have to win over 50% of the time to make the call profi table (definitely not an automatic call). In both cases the pot is equally large. But the call size is different.
Once you understand the impact that pot odds have on how often you must win in order for your call to be cost effective, you can compare your pot odds to your hand odds. Basically, you must think that you will, on average, win the hand with a greater likelihood than the pot odds demand. In the second example above, that means you must think your hand is at least 50/50 against your opponents for you to make an all-in call in which case you should be calling pretty darn tight. In the fi rst situation, you need to think you will win only 17% of the time to justify the call; so you can call with any two cards.
The point is you actually need to do the math to determine if you should call in any spot, not only in big all-in spots. Just eyeballing the pot and guessing that there is enough money out there to justify the call is, frankly, lazy and a good recipe for going broke in this game. Lazy math doesn’t work in poker. In the end, every call you make needs to be clearly justifi ed by your estimation of how your hand matches up to the range of hands your opponent holds, and then that needs to be stacked up against the pot odds.
