"pot committed"

A comment Outlaw made in a thread about the 3-bet pocket queens made me think about writing something about this. I often hear a player making a stupid call at the live tables say, aloud, that he is or was "pot committed". I suppose the theory behind this is that if there is enough money in the pot, even a player facing almost certain defeat might be justified in calling a bet based on the pot and implied odds.

And, of course, in theory, that might be true. Let's imagine a situation where you are playing an unlimited buy-in game where everyone has more than $10,000 in chips and the blinds are $10/$20. You draw KhKs and through a bunch of raises and re-raises pre-flop, the pot is built up to over $5,000. The flop comes up 7d8d9d and a player who has called raises and re-raises with suited connectors in many hands in the past and always slow-plays his made hands and bets his draws checks to you and then flat-calls your $2,500 bet. Now the pot is $10,000 and you figure he has two pair, a straight, a flush, or a straight flush. Now, it seems to me that he may be able to extract some value from you on the turn and the river, simply because in that sort of a pot, as long as he keeps your pot odds high enough, you may want to call his relatively small bets, just on the off chance that he was bluffing or calling on a draw, or perhaps you will catch runner-runner to beat him.

But in practice, in the games we all play at, how many times does that really happen? In other words, how many times is it really the case that the odds of you sucking out or the player not having the hand that he obviously has justifies putting additional money into the pot and paying him off?

In fact, most of the time when we think or say that we are "pot committed", we are doing something else-- rationalizing a gamble we want to make. We know we are behind, we have "too good a hand to lay down" (and in fact, the only hand that is too good to lay down under any circumstances is the nuts), and we don't want to be patient and wait until we have a better situation to bet in. Plus, we might be on tilt-- perhaps the player we are up against handed us a bad beat earlier in the situation or was forcing us to fold some good hands and by golly we don't want to fold this one!

The reality is that if you find yourself saying that you are "pot committed", you need to call for time. Go back over the hand, put the villain on a range and narrow it based on his later bets, and figure out what he is likely to have. Then calculate how many outs you have against that hand and how many of them are likely to be good, as well as how many outs the villain has to make an even better hand.

When you are done doing that, compare the size of the call to the pot size, calculate the implied odds of any further bet you expect on the next street, and then determine whether you are really "pot committed".

I did this for awhile (until I finally simply banished the concept of "pot committed" from my mind). 99 percent of the time, following this process will lead to a fold.

Actually what you should do in those cases is put your oponent on a range, figure your equity against that range, and see if pot odds(and implied odds when that is the case)are good enough to call.

settec, we don't disagree. I was skipping a step here-- in the situations where I have seen people say they were "pot committed", it has almost always been to excuse betting in situations where they knew they were up against a monster hand. And at that point they are just gambling to suck out and using the large pot size to justify the gamble. In that circumstance, the specific procedure I set out is a good way to lead them to fold, which is almost certainly the correct decision.

But yes, of course, this is just a variant of what should be the standard range-and-expected value calculation when you decide to call a bet post-flop. People who routinely make that calculation before calling big bets post-flop, however, probably don't get themselves into the situation where they are using the rationalization that they are "pot committed".

settecba, thinking of commitment helps us to get away from situations where we have the odds to call a really tight range when we're certainly behind by folding on an earlier street

when we REALIZE that calling the flop commits us to call a turn shove, we're no longer getting 2-to-1 with 40% equity against his range, we're laying our stack to win the other guy's stack plus the pot right now which might make us fold now even though we have the "pot odds" to call according to pokerstove

What iopq said. My impression, however, is that many players use "pot committed" as the excuse to throw good money after bad rather than the reason to act more cautiously before getting into the situation.

$0.25/$0.5 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:
Hero (UTG) ($49.25)
UTG 1 ($111.37)
CO ($28.80)
BTN ($36.29)
SB ($23.22)
BB ($55.60)

Pre-flop: ($0.75, 6 players) Hero is UTG
Hero raises to $1.75, UTG 1 calls $1.75, 2 folds, SB calls $1.50, 1 fold

Flop: ($5.75, 3 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $4, UTG 1 calls $4, SB folds

Turn: ($13.75, 2 players)
Hero bets $7, UTG 1 raises to $14, Hero calls $7

River: ($41.75, 2 players)
Hero checks, UTG 1 bets $14.75, Hero folds

Final Pot: $56.50

UTG 1 wins $54.45 ( won $19.95 )
SB lost -$1.75
Hero lost -$19.75



Sometimes you're just beat, whatever the price.

Yes bad players do these things all of the time.

Our commitment level should be determined before we act.. and the next card can change that commitment level. There really shouldn't be any "tough" spots or surprises in ring games because we have already decided what to do if our opponent does any number of things before we even act.

"Pot committed" seems to be more of a tournament phrase where you would be crippled if you bailed out anyways, so you might as well take the risk now while there are chips to be won. We can reload in ring games.

There are times in ring games that we have to make crying calls due to pot odds, though. Say you have 3-1 odds or better on the river and even though you know you are beat a lot, if you think he is bluffing 10% of the time you only have to be good like 20% or less of the time to break even... so you call. I guess you can call that pot committed if its for the last of your chips.. but we shouldn't of gotten in that spot anyways.. so.. back to talking about what bad players do.