Outs Question

This is just a general question for thinking purposes.

How many outs do we need on the Turn to call ANY bet?

What about the River?

Explain your answer.

This question is missing lots of qualifiers.

The short answer is that you'd need close to 50% equity or more to justify calling "any" bet and those situations are pretty rare on the turn, let alone the river. About 15 outs on the turn would justify that while about 23 outs or half the deck would justify it on the river. You'd be hard pressed to find a feasible situation where you have 23 clean outs

The only feasible situation that I've personally had come up similar to this is when you put your opponent on an underpair and you are drawing to a flush, open ended straight, AND both your overcards.

In reality, stack sizes, your current equity, your actual outs, and implied odds rule the day

Originally Posted by Illfavor

This question is missing lots of qualifiers.

This is more of a math question than anything else.

One of those "As pot odds approach 100% and Outs approach infinity" type questions.

Jason,
Not meant to be feasible. Just something to think about.

Yeah, the reason 50% equity is the answer for "any" bet is because bets are matched 1 to 1 and therefore, no matter how deep the stacks, the worst pot odds you can get is 1:1 or 50%. You can get 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc on your money, but never 1:2. The first number must be greater than or equal to the second number.

I try not to call many turn or river bets. There needs to be a certain set of circumstances for this to happen. There aren't many, and most do not have anything to do with outs/odds

Originally Posted by Jason

Yeah, the reason 50% equity is the answer for "any" bet is because bets are matched 1 to 1 and therefore, no matter how deep the stacks, the worst pot odds you can get is 1:1 or 50%. You can get 1:1, 2:1, 3:1, etc on your money, but never 1:2. The first number must be greater than or equal to the second number.

Yes I understand that. It was just a random thought after I looked at the table I sent you.

Is exactly 1:1 or 50% really possible?

X= pot
Y=villian's bet
Z=Hero's bet

Equity= Z/(X+Y+Z)

Y=Z so X has to be zero for exactly 50% equity. More non-feasible nonsense.

Originally Posted by jyms

I try not to call many turn or river bets. There needs to be a certain set of circumstances for this to happen. There aren't many, and most do not have anything to do with outs/odds

I assume you mean you fold/bet/raise.

What about when you have the absolute nuts? Is that one of the "certain circumstances"?

No, because there are forced blinds, even if UTG went all-in and one person called, the extra blind money will prevent it from being exactly 1:1. But, if the stacks are deep enough and the pot is small enough, it theoretically can approach very close to 50%.

No exactly 1:1 is not possible if there is money in the pot, which there always has to be on the turn. The answer to your question is still 50%, as that is the equity you would need for calling a bet of infinity to be profitable.

Originally Posted by Sasquach991

Originally Posted by jyms

I try not to call many turn or river bets. There needs to be a certain set of circumstances for this to happen. There aren't many, and most do not have anything to do with outs/odds

I assume you mean you fold/bet/raise.

What about when you have the absolute nuts? Is that one of the "certain circumstances"?

No, I want to get value from the nuts, so I tend to bet/raise. Mostly it would revolve around having hands that have no FE and probably behind but have some decent outs/implied odds or can still win enough on a river Check/Check

Originally Posted by jyms

Originally Posted by Sasquach991

Originally Posted by jyms

I try not to call many turn or river bets. There needs to be a certain set of circumstances for this to happen. There aren't many, and most do not have anything to do with outs/odds

I assume you mean you fold/bet/raise.

What about when you have the absolute nuts? Is that one of the "certain circumstances"?

No, I want to get value from the nuts, so I tend to bet/raise. Mostly it would revolve around having hands that have no FE and probably behind but have some decent outs/implied odds or can still win enough on a river Check/Check

Do you have an example? I still have a hard time with the meaning of fold equity.

On a hand like this vs two bad players I still could have the best hand, but I have no FE vs anything that beats me on the turn. I just hope for a Check/check river since he's laying great odds to stay. The river bet is just a joke compared to the pot. I don't see anyway to fold/raise.

No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (6 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

BB ($13.92)
UTG ($33.08)
MP ($42.80)
CO ($102.68)
SB ($50)
Hero (Button) ($121.42)

Preflop: Hero is Button with J, Q
UTG calls $0.50, MP calls $0.50, 1 fold, Hero bets $2, 2 folds, UTG calls $1.50, MP calls $1.50

Flop: ($6.75) 6, 8, J (3 players)
UTG bets $3.21, MP calls $3.21, Hero calls $3.21

Turn: ($16.38) 2 (3 players)
UTG bets $5.50, MP calls $5.50, Hero calls $5.50

River: ($32.88) 7 (3 players)
UTG bets $5.50, 1 fold, Hero calls $5.50

Total pot: $43.88

Results:
Hero had J, Q (one pair, Jacks).
UTG had 2, A (one pair, twos).
Outcome: Hero won $41.19

FWIW, I only had 52 hands that called the flop and turn last month (18000 hands). I was surprised it was that much.

omg what was UTG doing lol...like on every street

Originally Posted by jyms

On a hand like this vs two bad players I still could have the best hand, but I have no FE vs anything that beats me on the turn. I just hope for a Check/check river since he's laying great odds to stay. The river bet is just a joke compared to the pot. I don't see anyway to fold/raise.

No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (6 handed) - Hold'em Manager Converter Tool from FlopTurnRiver.com

saw flop | saw showdown

BB ($13.92)
UTG ($33.08)
MP ($42.80)
CO ($102.68)
SB ($50)
Hero (Button) ($121.42)

Preflop: Hero is Button with J, Q
UTG calls $0.50, MP calls $0.50, 1 fold, Hero bets $2, 2 folds, UTG calls $1.50, MP calls $1.50

Flop: ($6.75) 6, 8, J (3 players)
UTG bets $3.21, MP calls $3.21, Hero calls $3.21

Turn: ($16.38) 2 (3 players)
UTG bets $5.50, MP calls $5.50, Hero calls $5.50

River: ($32.88) 7 (3 players)
UTG bets $5.50, 1 fold, Hero calls $5.50

Total pot: $43.88

Results:
Hero had J, Q (one pair, Jacks).
UTG had 2, A (one pair, twos).
Outcome: Hero won $41.19

FWIW, I only had 52 hands that called the flop and turn last month (18000 hands). I was surprised it was that much.

Thanks, but I still don't understand the concept of FE.

Fold equity= % of time he folds/ Pot size, right?
I don't see how the two numbers are related. What's a good ratio and what's a bad ratio for these two numbers?

Are you saying that on the turn you are either WA/WB but you might have the best hand so you can't fold but you can't raise either because you may be way behind?

Originally Posted by surviva316

omg what was UTG doing lol...like on every street

Looks like he uses the 1/2 pot, 1/3 pot, 1/6 pot betting scheme.

jyms didn't know the stragedy so he didn't know he was supposed to fold.

no. let's say x=% of time villain folds, y=pot size and z=our bet size, then if x>(z/y), then we profit. i mean correct me if i'm wrong because i'm not reading this from anywhere or going off memory or anything it just stands to logic. the reason that fold equity is called just that is because our chance of winning (our equity) is of AT LEAST as much value as how often he folds to our bet because we win 100% of the times he folds. so the calculation isn't any different from any other equity calculation. you're still comparing how often you win to your risk:reward ration (where betting is the risk as opposed to calling under normal EV calculations).

in other words, big long explanation to tell you that you're overthinking it and FE is exactly the same as calling equity calculation wise.

as for this specific hand the donk is not folding a flush to anything including an all in. he's unlikely to fold a straight or a two pair, and we're really not all that confident he's even smart enough to fold KJ or AJ unless you just like over shove. we beat everything else so we don't want those hands to fold out. in any case his range of hands that he's folding is too thin to make turning our hand into a bluff profitable.

short version is that FE=the % of hands in his range he folds.

In a hypothetical situation for shortness and ease, If a 20/12 opponent Raises UTG and you give him a range of AQ+, 22+ and suited Ax and some connectors 89s+ (This is way wide if he's at least a little positionally aware) That's 170 hands

He then Cbets a TsJs3h flop his range is still wide and he could have just about anything depending on his Cbetting frequency. For arguments sake we say he always Cbets his UTG hands, but folds anything that missed the flop when raised. He's only continuing with Axs spades SC's with spades 33, TT+, and most of the SC's, and folding all the rest. That's about 98. thats 58%, so we can estimate our FE at about 42%

If we shove he folds 42% of the time. This means we need to factor things like, How much equity we have in the pot, what we win if he folds and how much we win when called.

Fold equity = % villain folds.

If in a certain spot villain folds 20% of the time, we have 20% fold equity. This % can be found by analyzing villain's range, and analyzing how he will play that range. For instance, if villain has a range consisting of 20 combos, yet we believe he will fold 6 of those combos to a raise, and continue with the other 14 combos, then we have 30% fold equity in this spot [6/20 = 30%].

Fold equity is most commonly used to determine the EV of bluffing/semi-bluffing. Say we feel that villain will fold 40% of the time to a cbet. Well if we bet pot, assuming we have 0% equity when called, this is a -EV bet. Because in order for that bet to be profitable, we need him to fold 50% of the time [Bet / (Bet + Pot) or X/2X]. However, if we feel he will still fold 40% of the time to a cbet, and we bet 1/2 pot, then it's a profitable bet because with that size he only needs to fold 33% of the time for our bet to be profitable.

However, the above is assuming we don't have any pot equity when called, and that we have no other way of winning the pot on future streets. However, we might still have a profitable way to play the hand if we don't feel he will fold often enough to our cbet. Such as we feel he will fold only 30% of the time to a 1/2 pot cbet, when we would need him to fold 33% of the time for that cbet to be profitable. However, we feel that when he calls, his range will be relatively weak (as we expect him to raise his strong hands) leaving him folding fairly often, say 70% of the time, to a turn cbet. Then even though the flop cbet was slightly -ev, because the turn is going to be massively +ev to 2barrel, it's still a profitable line to take.

Also, our equity when called must be taken into effect. In order for a 1/2 pot sized bet to be profitable it must work 33% of the time. But this is only if we have 0% equity when called. The more pot equity we have when called, the less often the bet has to work because we still have other ways of winning the pot.

So say we have a gutshot on the turn and are contemplating checking behind to see the river, or betting as a semibluff. With 4 outs, we have ~9% equity when called. Given this pot equity we only need villain to fold 24% of the time to a 1/2 PSB, instead of the original 33%. And if we have 20% pot equity when called, then he only needs to fold like 10% of the time to have a breakeven bet.