Might be dumb/obvious even incorrect theory/equity question.

[noble007]

Probably super basic, but I thought I'd post it anyway.

Question is should you call a bet with a made hand with few outs (no implied odds) if the current pot odds are in your favour if you know villain is likely to bet the next street with a similiar range. (I think I know the answer but I didn't know it until like this week, which might be really bad.)

E.g. You are on the turn with QQ on a 2223 turn villain bets pot $18 into $20, For the example lets say you know he either has JJ or KK/AA and you know he will value-bet the river near pot again. You can see by pokerstove you have 35% equity vs. his range so you have the pot odds to make the call. If the the river is a J/K/A you will fold and if it is a Q he will bet-fold. (for this contrived example) The river is a 3-10 card. Villain bets near pot again $50 into $56 you have 33.33% equity vs. his range so a call is profitable here so you call.

(On the turn you are calling $18 into a $20 pot. about 2/3 of the time you will lose $18=-$36 but 1/3 of the time you will win his bet $18 plus the pot/dead money $20 = +$38 so the call is profitable. On the river you are calling $50 into a $56 pot. exactly 2/3 of the time you will lose $50=-$100 but 1/3 of the time you win his bet $50 plus the pot $56=+$106 so profitable.)

Were your calls correct? Assuming raising was not an option..


The example might look obscure but there are lots of situations where I have a marginal made hand not strong enough to stack off with but I will call bets on a couple of streets if the equity I have vs. villains range is better than the pot odds I'm currently getting.

[Stacks]

Your example is a bit off. You said on the river we are calling $35 into a $40 pot. However, if the turn pot is $20 and villain bet $18, the river pot with be $56.

[noble007]

Yeah thanks, way off, fixed!

[Parasurama]

what else does it mean besides you can call profitably when the pot odds are in your favor? you did the math...

[noble007]

what else does it mean besides you can call profitably when the pot odds are in your favor? you did the math...

What if it means the opposite What if it means you can't call profitably when the pot odds are in your favour!

(Mainly in these cases where you know you are very likely to face a bet from a similiar range on the next street but have few outs to improve/unlikely to get paid off more than his next bet if you do - which happens quite often with a marginal made hand - you are planning to 'value call' down.)

[IowaSkinsFan]

I don't think ive ever thought about this, and maybe im just thinking weird, but this seems like an interesting concept.

At first I thought that you fold turn and the math would come to show that folding the turn is much less unprofitable than calling turn and calling river because your essentially calling the turn for $68 to win a $20 pot. But then I looked at your math and it seemed right. I'm not sure exactly how to do this problem correctly.

[noble007]

Ok, well this is how I thought of it, my thinking may be wrong obv.

Another way of looking at this situation is this...

I have QQ I know I came going to face a near pot bet on this street and the next. 1 out of 3 times I will beat his JJ 2 out of 3 times I will lose to his AA/KK.

What happens when I win with QQ 1 out of 3 times vs JJ?
I win the $20 of the dead money that is in the pot at the moment and I also win my opponents $18 turn bet and his $50 river bet.
$20+$18+$50= +$88

What happens when I lose with QQ 1 out of 3 times to KK?
I lose my $18 turn call and my $50 river call. $18+$50=-$68

What happens when I lose with QQ 1 out of 3 times to AA?
I lose my $18 turn call and my $50 river call. $18+$50=-$68

So you can see that even though the calls looked profitable,actually
1 x I will win $88 I didn't have before &
2 x I will lose $68 = -$136

-$136+$88=-$48

$48/3=-$16

Anyway my conclusion is that we will lose $16 avg. per hand in the above example even though the pot odds were in our favour to make the 'value call' on both streets. Therefore folding would be optimal I 'think'.

So my idea/theory is something like this.
Unless you are facing an all in decision or are at the river (the very last betting round.) Then in cases where you know you are very likely to face a bet from a similiar range on the next street but have few outs to improve/unlikely to get paid off more than his next bet if you do - which happens quite often with a marginal made hand - then the equity you need vs. that range to value call is far greater than the pot odds would suggest.


I think/thought my maths was wrong or maybe most people knew this because it seemed pretty obv. from the other angle.

But anyway there's a possibility that the criteria we currently use to evaluate our value calls (Are the pot odds favourable) on early streets may be wrong (Esp. if we can anticipate from history/stats/texture villain is likely to bet the next street with a similiar range again.)

[Numbr2intheWorld]

Hmmm, i really don't think this is call. I look at it this way, with the knowledge that he's betting the river, you essentially are matching his $68 with $20 in the pot, which is definitely not correct pot odds.

But... does this situation come up? Very rarely it seems. You usually have a draw yourself and its pretty crazy for one to have a range the small.

[noble007]

Maybe, but this was just a very contrived unrealistic example to make the numbers very easy and error of calling super-obvious, just my opinion but I think this situation comes up all the time.

You & ISF correctly pointed out that this isn't a call for the correct resons but that doesn't mean I don't make 20 them every day, maybe most people already see this though.

I just doubt most people only call flop bets with a medium pocket pair when they are a favourite vs. an aggressive villains range or because they are drawing to a set but rather it's because even though they are a slight underdog the pot odds are in their favour so folding would be a 'mistake', and when they face that inevitable turn bet they will look at their equity again and go mmm. 40% equity vs. his range & only need 30% to make the call, EZ game baby.

Anyways it was a eye big opener for me - the negative cumalitive effect of calling bets even as only a slight underdog.

[Stacks]

This is kind of perplexing. So how much equity would you need here on the turn to call?

say you have 44% equity
you win $88 44% of the time and lose $68 56% of the time
38.72 - 38.08 = 0.64

Massimo gave the correct answer, we're calling $68 into a pot of $20

[noble007]

Yeah iopq's answer looks right and Mass & ISF's way is much easier to understand than mine.

[Stacks]

Okay, so when I first came to this thread, I was thinking that we needed 44% equity to call turn and river properly. As we are essentially making our decision to call both streets on the turn, putting in $68 to win what will be a $156 pot. So the needed equity is 68/156 = 44%.

However, what had me perplexed was the fact that we weren't going to be calling all rivers. I assume we fold J/K/A rivers, as well as on a Q river we win $50 from villian's KK-AA combos. So I felt that given these dynamics the needed equity would be a bit lower than the 44% from the previous calculations. But I was too tired (haven't slept yet) to figure it out.

Anyways.. Pretty simple, yet great thread. I've known about calculating future calls for a little while, but still fail to apply it often. This thread though shows quite a few good things.

One that that comes from this thread is that as the PFR these sort of boards seem perfect for barreling as it's one of the easiest ISF theorem situations in which Our Range > Their Range (as PFR).

[IowaSkinsFan]

obv this specific situation is just almost never going to come up, but a situation like it, such as you have very little suck out equity on the flop or turn and feel he has a range thats barrelling a lot but is strong is similar.

[nihil2501]

this is the typical reverse implied odds example

not really reverse implied odds, because reverse implied odds is when the pots we win are smaller in amount than the pots we win

like when we have AQ vs. someone with a tight 3b range of say QQ+,AK
we stand to only win a cbet, but he can take our stack when we flop an ace or a queen (which is why we wouldn't call vs. a nit)

here it's a case of "don't call turn if you don't plan on calling river"