[baltostar]

[ QUOTE ]
Baltostar, your idea of

"If a decision criteria for playing across event risk is to be useful, it should not incur radical swings in validity when successively applied to similar scenarios."

Doesn't actualy aply in your min-raising battle example.

You assume that our criteria is simply "cost-to-call" so that in your minraising example we would just stack off with a drawing hand. But thats not actually what we are saying.

We say, consider cost to call, if you are closing the action, that's all you need to think about.

If you aren't closing the action, make an educated guess (we are allowed those in poker, and most of us are quite good at them) as to what chance you have of actually seing a flop.

So in your min raisng example, the first time it would come around we'd go, hmm cheap call, I have the odds, chance of guy behind me re-raising is reasonably low, and I have good odds, lets call.

The second time around, we'd go, WTF, these guys are stuck in some kind of min-raising battle, I don't want to be in the middle of it, my immediate cost to call is low, but I'm not closing the action, and my chance of seeing a flop cheaply has just gone way down, I'll fold.

If you don't get it the second time, you'd definitely get it the third and only an absolute moron would stack off using our criteria here.

SO our criteria does work in your min-raising example, as people have already pointed out. As this seems to be the only thing you argument is relying on, you really need to respond to this specifically.

[/ QUOTE ]

Good analysis Jammy.

The point I'm trying to make is not that we should throw away cost-to-call in favor of total-cost when calculating implied odds, or that we shouldn't involve other considerations. Yeah, if they min re-raise each other it's a probably a good read that they're both trying to suck each other in, and we should bail.

What you want out of an implied odds calculation given is an decent idea of whether the relative reward/risk is worth it (relative to other opportunities).

When my goal is to either hit the flop hard or abandon, I find it useful to calculate implied odds given based on total cost.

It's not a strict rule, just a guideline, just as calculating based on cost-to-call should also be.

Someone else mentioned that if you know that his min-raise means AA, and you know he'll stack, then using total-cost to calculate implied odds is useless. That's true. But I don't recommend using total-cost if you can make that additional read.

I find calculating implied odds based on total-cost is useful to prevent you from whittling down your stack-utility on sub-par set/FD/SD-mining opportunities.

Many times in a tourney, I've calc'd (and re-calc'd if raised) implied odds on many hands and then I felt I had to make the call because it was correct according to the math. Then at some point I notice my stack-utility has been frittered away and I wish I'd only paid the minimum for each set/FD/SD-mining opportunity.

I'm just trying to figure out ways to avoid getting yourself in trouble, to protect yourself from yourself.