A question about Harrington's Workbook

[Boise123]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You forgot to mention that this was a hand played by Phil Ivey.

[/ QUOTE ]

This hand was played by Phil Ivey.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yeah, at the Monte Carlo Millions. He wins the hand with trip 4's.

[Brewster]

I guess that's the explanation that he should've given. Kind of hard to infer that from the text....

[MoonOrb]

[ QUOTE ]
Good point about the pot being heads-up, but is the field narrowing down from nine people to two the same as a heads-up hand? I see true heads-up as being two random hands. Here, the BB is one of 8 other random hands, and he says he has something. Not quite the same as being dealt 44 against one other hand.

[/ QUOTE ]

It's HU as long as it's against one other opponent. The fact that the rest of the table folded to the big raise just gives us some insight into what the BB's possible range is. It becomes an exercise of putting him on a range and then assessing our equity against that range. Without any reads, we wouldn't want to assume that his bet size must indicate a pocket pair, which is the only thing that we're behind. Everything else we're ahead of/virtually tied with.

[RedJoker]

[ QUOTE ]
He gives a sample hand in problem 11. Basically, there are a couple limpers in a pot, then it comes to you, with 44. You call the $200. Then the BB raises $2,700, making the pot $5,700. Everyone up to you folds. The question is do you call or fold?

Now, I would fold here, but Harrington recommends calling. He says that the reason for calling is that pot is giving almost 2-to-1 pot odds. What I don't understand is why that is so enticing. I thought the whole 'point' of playing low pairs was to try to hit a set, and since the chances of hitting a set on the flop are 1 in 8, don't you need 8:1 pot odds to call a raise like that?? Isn't that how pot odds work or do I totally have this concept wrong?

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]

stack sizes:

BB: 50,000
Me: 75,000

Blinds 200/400

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't have the book but going on what you posted:

You need 8-1 implied odds if you know you're going to get all your opponents stack postflop. In most cases we can't be sure and it's generally accepted that you should have 12-1 implied.

In this case the effective stack is 50,000 and it's 2,700 to call or 18-1 implied. The BB has raised into a field of limpers OOP so is very likely to have a strong hand which makes it more likely we'll be able to get value postflop if we hit our set.