Where does profit come from?

[Aisthesis]

Interesting point. I was guessing mine at over 50%, but it's actually 49.62%.

Theoretically, though, shouldn't somewhere around maybe 40% be near optimal?

I mean, it's completely impossible (I think) to filter all of this to get what you're really looking for, but it seems like you're good for the call (in theory) if you win 1/3 of the time upon calling a pot-sized bet.

Of course, there are those pots where it just gets checked all the way to the river, so those are completely irrelevant, since it's just luck there who won it.

Also, in the more normal case where there's some kind of action, you can put your opponent on some kind of hand (and you obviously know your own), so significantly better than the 33% should be the case for winning players.

But I think you bring up an important point: If you're only calling the river when you win 100%, then you're playing way too tight.

Anyhow, I guess I'm also focussing on a particular situation which also doesn't capture all the W$SD situations--namely, where you're calling (or raising) an actual river bet. If it's all-in on some earlier street, then that's also a very different scenario (and on those you really should be significantly better than 50% at least in HU situations).

Well, unfortunately, I see no way to filter these things, but I think it's important to distinguish between various scenarios on W$SD:

1) All-in on flop. Here, I think you should be significantly above 50%.

2) You called a river bet. Here, you really should probably be somewhat below 50%, although I'm not sure how much.

3) You called pot-sized turn bet, but the river was checked. Well, you only need to win this 1/3 of the time for your call to have been good. Then again, if you rivered the nuts, you presumably bet...