Public Service Announcement: Betting Draws on the Come

[Befolder]

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Okay, our share of the pot is still 20% because there are still five players in. However since we only have one card to come, the chances of making our hand have now changed. We now use the rule of two to calculate. Our nine outs are still clean so 9 outs x 2 = 18%.
Pot equity: 20%
Making hand: 18%


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i haven't harped on this recently, but your share is not 1/(number of players in hand). that is the absolute best case. assuming your contribution is only 20% on that turn card assumes that everyone will always call every bet.

so if there are 4 players on the flop and you have A7s in the BB in an unraised pot and the flop is KQ4 with two of your suit. SB bets. should you raise? 35 > 25 so yeah, right? nope.

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I believe I covered that in the know your relative position section. Our share of the pot is 1/# of players at every moment and it can certainly change on every action. As players, we of course have to keep recalculating that.

[milesdyson]

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Okay, our share of the pot is still 20% because there are still five players in. However since we only have one card to come, the chances of making our hand have now changed. We now use the rule of two to calculate. Our nine outs are still clean so 9 outs x 2 = 18%.
Pot equity: 20%
Making hand: 18%


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i haven't harped on this recently, but your share is not 1/(number of players in hand). that is the absolute best case. assuming your contribution is only 20% on that turn card assumes that everyone will always call every bet.

so if there are 4 players on the flop and you have A7s in the BB in an unraised pot and the flop is KQ4 with two of your suit. SB bets. should you raise? 35 > 25 so yeah, right? nope.

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I believe I covered that in the know your relative position section. Our share of the pot is 1/# of players at every moment and it can certainly change on every action. As players, we of course have to keep recalculating that.

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maybe i just took the quoted part out of context, but you make it seem as though a raise is just slightly -ev since you compare the numbers 20% and 18%. but in reality, a raise in that hand is unbelievably horrible as you will often get it 3-way or less, and you'll sometimes get 3-bet by the donker.

you should basically NEVER be using the number 1/(number of players) as anything. you need to estimate how many players will go to the next street given any action you wish to make on the current street. that's all.

[Befolder]

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maybe i just took the quoted part out of context, but you make it seem as though a raise is just slightly -ev since you compare the numbers 20% and 18%. but in reality, a raise in that hand is unbelievably horrible as you will often get it 3-way or less, and you'll sometimes get 3-bet by the donker.

you should basically NEVER be using the number 1/(number of players) as anything. you need to estimate how many players will go to the next street given any action you wish to make on the current street. that's all.

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I considered that the sb might 3 bet when I was writing it up. I should have written something in that said to beware of what may happen if you do get 3 bet.

I did state that the main goal is to get as many bets in as possible, though I didn't talk about every fine point of it, which is why I'm glad you guys are bringing them up. I'd have had to write out an outline and have a five page post to nail them all on my first try.

[milesdyson]

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If your equity is 27% and you have three opponents, technically you have an equity edge but if you bet and someone folds and your equity is now like 28%, your bet lost money.

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No. In the situation where one player folds to your bet when you have 27% equity, and two other players call, and you then have 28% equity, assuming there are some bets already in the pot--I think around 5 bets--your bet can't possibly lose money.

This is assuming we know that the flop action goes like this.

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i hope you're just blatantly misunderstanding what xhad is saying, because if not, i am super sad that someone can post here for as long as you have posted here and not understand why he's right.

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i read the whole post that he quoted from, and i think you're not just misunderstanding.

this is what you're saying:

"we see a flop 8-ways capped for 32 bets, and we hold 33. flop is 222 and no one holds a 2. we have about 8% chance of hitting our boat on the turn or river, and the pot will be like 64 bets if we get the flop capped. so 60:4 = 15:1 = ~6% which is < 8% so capping that flop is for value if we insure everyone sees the turn. weird, but capping a 2-outer is +ev in this situation."

hopefully now you can see why xhad is right.

[Shillx]

Noobs,

Get this maxim

A bet with a hand of equity e will be +EV if more then (1/e - 1) people call it.

Out of your heads. It only applies when you are last to act.

[DrModern]

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i hope you're just blatantly misunderstanding what xhad is saying, because if not, i am super sad that someone can post here for as long as you have posted here and not understand why he's right.

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Hmmm... What could I be failing to see?

If by "loses money," you just mean that I put in a bet when my pot equity is lower than my BEP, then, yes, obviously this bet loses money.

But what I was saying can be illustrated by the following case:

It's heads up on the turn and I have some hand that I magically know has exactly 25% equity, i.e. I will make a winner 25% of the time, and I will check and fold the river when I miss. Ignoring implied odds, if I check and my opponent bets at me, and the pot is offering me, say, 6:1 odds, and I call, how can my call possibly be -EV?

As it's clearly a +EV call, how can it be -EV for me if I bet and my opponent calls? Edited to add: I'm assuming here that my exact equity is known and that we live in bizzaro world where I know my opponent will only call. The same number of bets go in to the same size pot either way.

If "losing money" is distinct from being -EV then I understand the point, but if they're the same then I'm either woefully confused, or am missing something obvious.

[DrModern]

I take it what you're trying to show me I'm wrong about comes down to what you told Befolder, i.e.:

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you should basically NEVER be using the number 1/(number of players) as anything. you need to estimate how many players will go to the next street given any action you wish to make on the current street. that's all.

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If so, then point taken.

[Xhad]

Doc, the part you're missing is that we stand to win the money in the pot as long as we don't fold. So your calculation of the EV of a bet is wrong, because it assumes that we win our share of the pot because of our bet. We don't. We win it because of our non-folding, which could involve checking or calling.

I did forget to point out that if our equity jumps at all we gain some EV there. But in my example that was 1% of the pot, so if the pot is "only" 10SB, then your equity jump represents an extra .1SB, which really isn't enough to make the bet +EV.

So I guess in my rule we could change "or a semibluff might work" to "or your equity can increase enough relative to the pot size to make the bet worth it" (think of a successful semibluff as an equity jump to 100%)

EDIT:

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As it's clearly a +EV call, how can it be -EV for me if I bet and my opponent calls? The same number of bets go in to the same size pot either way.

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Because the bet won't necessarily go in if you don't bet. You've seen hands where it's correct to peel 22 for a set? Even if you can, wouldn't you prefer a bet not go in at all if that were a choice?

[Jim14Qc]

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i hope you're just blatantly misunderstanding what xhad is saying, because if not, i am super sad that someone can post here for as long as you have posted here and not understand why he's right.

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Hmmm... What could I be failing to see?

If by "loses money," you just mean that I put in a bet when my pot equity is lower than my BEP, then, yes, obviously this bet loses money.

But what I was saying can be illustrated by the following case:

It's the turn and I have some hand that I magically know has exactly 25% equity, i.e. I will make a winner 25% of the time, and I will check and fold the river when I miss. Ignoring implied odds, if I check and my opponents bets at me, and the pot is offering me, say, 6:1 odds, and I call, how can my call possibly be -EV?

As it's clearly a +EV call, how can it be -EV for me if I bet and my opponent calls? The same number of bets go in to the same size pot either way.

If "losing money" is distinct from being -EV then I understand the point, but if they're the same then I'm either woefully confused, or am missing something obvious.

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If your pot equity is 35% and there are 4 players in the pot (including you), then your equity is higher than your BEP, so if you knew for sure that everyone was going to call, the most +EV move would be to try to cap since you gain 10% of every bet/call. The problem is, you cannot know for sure everyone will call, thus making raising next on the seat a -EV play. Against 2 bets, it is almost sure that 2+ opponents will fold unless they have hit very well the flop or are the perfect calling stations. If you raise and make the remaining 2 opponents fold, your BEP becomes 50% while your pot equity is still only 35%. Raising can still be a +EV play though, but only if you are in position against the better and can attribute the remaining equity missing to a free card you will be able to get on the turn or by cleaning some of your outs (overcards?).

So pretty much just because your pot odds dictate a CALL doesn't mean that a bet is +EV since you may have higher pot equity than pot odds while still having pot equity smaller than BEP against the remaining opponents, especially if your bet may make some of those oponents fold. The exception is when you are using you bet/raise a a semi-bluff to induce a free card or clean outs, in which case it MAY be right depending on the situation.

Pot odds making a call right while pot equtiy making a bet/raise wrong often happens when the turn card does not help a strong draw that was bet on the flop due to the fact that your pot equity is calculated with two cards left on the flop and only one to go on the turn, making it much bigger on the flop than on the turn if you don't hit. It is thus often right to bet/raise a strong draw on the flop but take a free card or simply call on the turn.


To OP: great post. I'm sure it will help many understand waht you are explaining.

[DrModern]

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Because the bet won't necessarily go in if you don't bet. You've seen hands where it's correct to peel 22 for a set? Even if you can, wouldn't you prefer a bet not go in at all if that were a choice?

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Xhad wins a prize for making the whole thing click for me with 3 sentences. This solves all my misunderstanings.