+Pot Odds don’t exist in a vaccum
In the last two big No Limit tournaments I played I have seen several players count a pot down, look at how much they have to call, shrug their shoulders and say, “I guess I have to call with that much money in the pot.” In situations where there was a clear fold. For example, a player who we will call Steve raised 3 from the button to 800 when the blinds were 150/300 at a ten handed table. The tightest player in the game then moved in from the small blind. And when I say tight, I really mean tight, snug, buttoned down, hadn’t hardly played a hand…all signs pointed to tight. The player had a total of 3275 so that sent it 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 5 cards to come two under cards are a 2 to 1 dog to two unshared over cards. 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 and shrugged and said I guess I have to call no matter what and threw his money in the pot….with A4 off suit. Now here is the problem, our tight hero almost never has a hand that A4 off is better than a 2 to 1 dog against. A4 against pairs 55 through KK is slightly worse than 2 to 1. Against a better Ace ( and let’s face it, most of them are better) A4 will be a 3 to 1 dog (that fact is particularly problematic for the call here). The only hands A4 does okay against are 33 and 22, hands our hero is unlikely to hold, and KQ or worse (again hands unlikely here). But even if we allow for KQ and KJ suited or unsuited, against the range of hands our hero has A4 is much worse than a 2 to 1 underdog (our hero actually had AT, 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 are losing on average 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 so 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 exact same mistake in the last month or so. But I have a pretty strong suspicion that it is a clear case of 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 flop 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 does not really have to do with pot size or the fact that the call is an all-in. I mean these two factors have a little something to do with it but not in a vacuum, not without comparing the size of the pot to the size of the call and then comparing those odds to the likely price your hand is against your opponent’s range of hands give that you know it is an all-in bet so you are guaranteed to see 5 cards. Phew! That was a mouthful. But that is the point. The call is not 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 there is $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 from there in order to be in profit. In the first case you only have to win a little over 17% of the time to make the call profitable (that would make it an automatic call). Compare that to the second case where you have to win over 50% of the time to make the call profitable (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 to be in profit you can now compare you pot odds to what you think your hand odds are. Basically, you must think that you will on average win the hand with a greater likelihood than the pot odds demand for you to be in profit. In case 2 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 first case, you just need to think you will win 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 work to determine if you should call in any spot, not just 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 justified by your estimation of how your hand matches up to the range of hand your opponent holds and then that needs to be stacked up against the pot odds.