On Pot Odds

[spoonitnow]

I'm curious to get into the mind of the microstakes player.

Assume $0.05/0.10 blinds with $10 stacks.

You open raise to $0.40 preflop with A Q and are called by the big blind.

The pot is $0.85 on the flop and it comes K 9 5, giving you the nut flush draw.

The big blind opens for $0.50 giving you 2.7:1 and you call.

The pot is $1.85 on the turn and it comes K 9 5 K.

How would you count your outs and how big of a bet would you call here?

[badgers]

This is by far the best presented bad beat story I have seen all day.

[spoonitnow]

This is by far the best presented bad beat story I have seen all day.

Rofl not a bad beat story, I made up the hand on the fly.

[Warpe]

I'd raise the flop.

[Pelion]

I'd raise the flop.

you arent a microstakes player. dont skew the results

[spoonitnow]

I'd raise the flop.

I would about 2/3rds of the time but that's beside the point =P

[bode]

wouldnt you just have 8 outs on the turn since the 5h pairs the board?

[kmind]

Are you asking for us to put villain on a hand and then do the outs accordingly? Or did you want to give villain say either trip Kings or two pair (or a full house in which we don't have any odds) and we give out the actual odds answer?

[Jibalob]

going by ed miller's reasoning in SSHE, I think you would count 4 full outs as each heart left in the deck (exept the 9) is worth about 1/2 an out because it will complete your hand but won't give you the nuts.

Ofcourse, depending on player reads etc you could probably estimate whether or not each heart is worth more/less than 0.5 outs but its a good starting point.

[spoonitnow]

Are you asking for us to put villain on a hand and then do the outs accordingly? Or did you want to give villain say either trip Kings or two pair (or a full house in which we don't have any odds) and we give out the actual odds answer?

I'm asking:

How would you count your outs and how big of a bet would you call here?

If you were playing this hand, you don't get to see villain's cards, so why should you know what they are here?

[spoonitnow]

wouldnt you just have 8 outs on the turn since the 5h pairs the board?

You lost me =P

[bode]

wouldnt you just have 8 outs on the turn since the 5h pairs the board?

You lost me =P

assuming villain has a K, which he does here a fair amount, we would have 8 outs. Our 3 aces are no longer outs, our Q's arent outs, and of the 9 hearts left in the deck, the 5h doesnt help us. hence, 8 outs.

[miracleriver]

5h came on the flop and is not part of the 9 hearts left in the deck. but 9h is not a clean out and is polly what you meant.

[spoonitnow]

wouldnt you just have 8 outs on the turn since the 5h pairs the board?

You lost me =P

assuming villain has a K, which he does here a fair amount, we would have 8 outs. Our 3 aces are no longer outs, our Q's arent outs, and of the 9 hearts left in the deck, the 5h doesnt help us. hence, 8 outs.

The 5h is on the flop silly, I think you mean the 9h =P

[kmind]

I thought you meant a really easy, hands supposed to be given odds counting question.

Anyways, I would be probably scared of only one heart, the 9h. He could have KJ so the Jh may not be clean but I still would make a call pot size or lower on the river if that was the case.

[poker_pup]

I play 10NL and I don't really count outs. I THINK that there's about a 15% chance of hitting my flush on the river, so I'd be more than willing to call a bet up to about 15% of the pot. Depending on my read on the villian, I may go even higher.

[Chopper]

hard for me to "count outs" with no specific reads on player. if he's a tightish player, i'm giving more credit for him having the K or 99/55. if he's aggro AT A $10 TABLE, i plan to c/r him here and semi-bluff with the nut flush draw. if he calls, and i hit my heart, w/o pairing the board, i pay it off and bet/call the river if checked to.

w/o any player reads, though, counting outs is pretty silly here (the range is just too wide, due to discounting), imo. and, you wont get 4.5:1 (min for a flush plus overcard A), much less more than those odds (he isnt leading less than another $.50)... you may need more giving he only called your raise and can have boated on the turn with 99/55, and you may be drawing dead...even when drawing to the nut flush.

this one becomes more player/instinct driven. personally, if the player is tightish or passive, i am in for pot control here, even if i hit...but i'm not sold on the trips/boat, yet...unless villain is a total rock-nit.

[bode]

5h came on the flop and is not part of the 9 hearts left in the deck. but 9h is not a clean out and is polly what you meant.

my bad

[spoonitnow]

I THINK that there's about a 15% chance of hitting my flush on the river, so I'd be more than willing to call a bet up to about 15% of the pot.

I think your understanding of pot odds might be a little off.

[spoonitnow]

I thought you meant a really easy, hands supposed to be given odds counting question.

Anyways, I would be probably scared of only one heart, the 9h. He could have KJ so the Jh may not be clean but I still would make a call pot size or lower on the river if that was the case.

So how big of a bet would you call on the turn here?

[spoonitnow]

hard for me to "count outs" with no specific reads on player. if he's a tightish player, i'm giving more credit for him having the K or 99/55. if he's aggro AT A $10 TABLE, i plan to c/r him here and semi-bluff with the nut flush draw. if he calls, and i hit my heart, w/o pairing the board, i pay it off and bet/call the river if checked to.

w/o any player reads, though, counting outs is pretty silly here (the range is just too wide, due to discounting), imo. and, you wont get 4.5:1 (min for a flush plus overcard A), much less more than those odds (he isnt leading less than another $.50)... you may need more giving he only called your raise and can have boated on the turn with 99/55, and you may be drawing dead...even when drawing to the nut flush.

this one becomes more player/instinct driven. personally, if the player is tightish or passive, i am in for pot control here, even if i hit...but i'm not sold on the trips/boat, yet...unless villain is a total rock-nit.

So how do you count your outs and how big of a bet would you call here?

[euphoricism]

You cant count your outs like in SSH -- NL outs don't work like LHE outs due to the increased penalty for being wrong in NL (bigger bet). Drawing to tainted outs in NL is deadly, the penalty for making a big non-nut hand is huge.

With that said, I haven't a clue what the answer is here.

[kmind]

n/m

[Chopper]

hard for me to "count outs" with no specific reads on player. if he's a tightish player, i'm giving more credit for him having the K or 99/55. if he's aggro AT A $10 TABLE, i plan to c/r him here and semi-bluff with the nut flush draw. if he calls, and i hit my heart, w/o pairing the board, i pay it off and bet/call the river if checked to.

w/o any player reads, though, counting outs is pretty silly here (the range is just too wide, due to discounting), imo. and, you wont get 4.5:1 (min for a flush plus overcard A), much less more than those odds (he isnt leading less than another $.50)... you may need more giving he only called your raise and can have boated on the turn with 99/55, and you may be drawing dead...even when drawing to the nut flush.

this one becomes more player/instinct driven. personally, if the player is tightish or passive, i am in for pot control here, even if i hit...but i'm not sold on the trips/boat, yet...unless villain is a total rock-nit.

So how do you count your outs and how big of a bet would you call here?

doesnt make sense to me to try and count outs here. and i dont know how much i would call/chase with...i think i said why it depends, though. i dont like the "it depends" answer without explanation.

dont get me wrong, its a good example. just a bit too vague.

[sejje]

I'm with chopper. How do we count outs if we don't have any read on villain?

[Chopper]

spoon,

i'm not saying this to be condescending. but, if you want insight into the mind of the microstakes player, it may be better to read one of the books that targets noobs. SSHE (has some principles in it that transfer), etc.

i'm sure you have those on your shelf already.

what i'm saying is: most micros that play nitty tight may have read one of those, too, and are only using those principles. they dont venture off the "rules" of engagement. they play off starting hand charts, dont size bets with any thought, and are no longer paying off flushes regularly.

they dont see/care to see any of the nuances of the game. they are only trying to play "their" cards and stick to "abc," "fit-or-fold" poker...thanks to the books, forums, etc.

in general, people are a bunch of "lemmings." they dont want to think for themselves. they only want to be told what to do, and the basics of getting it done. it's like their brains are permanently "clocked out." if you find one that CAN think for himself...hire him, and put him to work for you. (that gets me on a completely different soapbox, so i'll stop now)

other than the nitty tight player you have the action junkies that play with small bankrolls (if they even do that), and play a crappy LAG style. and everyone else seems to fall somewhere in between. all bad, and all expoitable. you just need to focus on "way ahead" situations, and determine what your villain thinks "a good hand" is...no doubt he'll take it too far.

there seem to be more of the "starting hand chart" players nowadays than the "crappy LAGs" that's for sure.

[spoonitnow]

You cant count your outs like in SSH -- NL outs don't work like LHE outs due to the increased penalty for being wrong in NL (bigger bet). Drawing to tainted outs in NL is deadly, the penalty for making a big non-nut hand is huge.

With that said, I haven't a clue what the answer is here.

IMO best answer so far

[spoonitnow]

long post

That's nice, albeit unrelated as fuck to this hand.

Edit: Put cliff notes first, math explanation last.

A good portion of the time we're already drawing dead, and if he has a king that isn't a boat yet, we're going to both improve on the river one-eighth of the time, which will equally suck. Overall, when we improve on the river, we're still probably losing almost half of the time, so our 8 heart outs (excluding the 9) are really only worth about half an out each.

With that noted, I'm probably folding to anything bigger than a $0.20 bet with a plan of when I hit to call a pot-sized or less bet on the river and bet half the pot or so if I'm checked to in an attempt to get value from bare trips.

--- MATH ALERT ---

At 10nl, villain will likely go to the felt on any river with any king, two pair turned full house, or set turned full house. Now, obviously sometimes he might get away from K2 on this flop or something, but other times he might have a lower flush draw or bottom two pair on the flop, so I'll assume those cases approximately cancel each other out.

So here are the possibilities from this example range:
* Group 1: 6 possible combinations of 55 or 99 each.
* Group 2: 6 possible combinations of K9 or K5 each.
* Group 3: 8 possible combinations of KJ, KT, K8, K7, K6, K4, K3 or K2 each.
* Group 4: 6 possible combinations of AK or KQ each.

For any holding in Group 3, if we make our flush on the river, from our remaining 8 outs, there is a 12.5% (1/8th) chance villain also improved to a full house. Now, let's throw out a couple of fantasy scenarios to get a feel for how much value we have against this particular range.

Let's say villain let's us draw for free on the turn, and always makes a pot-sized bet on the river. We'll call this bet if we get there with one of our 8 outs, and we'll fold if we don't. When we miss our flush draw, we simply fold, so there's nothing to compute about the times we miss our draw.

So we need to know what percent of the time we'll be losing on the river if our clean hearts hit. Since 12 times out of 26 he has his full house by the turn, we're already losing 46.2% of the time. In 12.5% of the remaining 53.8%, our opponent will make his full house on the river, which accounts for 6.725% of the time. This means that against this range, if we get the river for free and call a pot-sized river bet, we'll lose 52.925% of the time, which will be a negative profit for us.

Let's say villain bets 1/4th of the pot on the turn, which we call getting 5:1, and always makes a 3/4th pot-sized bet on the river, to which again we'll call if we make one of our 8 outs, and fold if we miss. We'll get there on the river 17.8% of the time, so the other 82.2% of the time we're down one-fourth of the pot value. In that 17.8%, we'll be behind 52.925% of the time to a 3/4th pot-sized bet. The other 47.075% of the time, we win a pot the size of 2.25 times the size of the pot on the turn. Sooo....

Times we miss: (.822)(-.25) = -0.2055
Times we hit and lose: (.178)(.52925)(-.75) = -0.070654875
Times we hit and win: (.178)(.47075)(2.25) = 0.188535375

For a grand total of -0.0876195 times the size of the pot on the turn.

Note that these are fantasy scenarios, but prove a point: you generally don't have nearly as much equity here as you think you do.