What do pot odds tell me??
Posted by tbeckett
Posted by
tbeckett
posted in
Low Stakes
What do pot odds tell me??
I understand the logic of equity. Its how often my hands wins. So you take an opponent's range and compare that range to your hand to see if a call is correct. But I cant understand pots odds. What are pots odds meant to tell me?? Equity is tied to a hand, its a comparison of hands. But pots odds seem to me a random number. What am I missing??
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Imagine your opponent bets potsize, which is 1.
Now you have to call 1 to win 2. Which is the pot odds.
I never use it this way. I use bet/(bet+bet+pot). In this case it would be 1/3. Or 33.33%
If your equity is higher than 33.33%, meaning you win more often than the 1/3rd, you make money on the call.
So that's what pot odds do. When used together with equity they tell you if it's a good call or a bad call (or breakeven).
This idea is mostly used in bluffcatch situations. If your opponent bets potsize he needs to bluff 33.33% off the time. If he bluffs more you call all bluffcatchers. If he bluffs less you fold all bluffcatchers.
There's likely a decent amount of videos on RIO about this.
I dont get why the pot odds answer (33% in your example) can be used to compare with equity. Pot odds are not tied to any specific hand, its just a random pot calculation.
I explain it somewhat visually in this video: https://www.runitonce.com/poker-training/videos/shaun-pauwels-ev-mathematics/
The simple formula to use equity and pot odds is:
Equity x (Pot+bet) >= bet
If this is true, then you breakeven or win money by making the call.
Take a game where you flip a coin and pay 1 to play the game.
The chance to win the game is a coinflip, 50%. This is your equity.
The amount you need to pay is 1. This is bet.
We can play with the amount the game pays out, this is your (pot+bet) part.
Game pays 2. And we use our formula
Equity x (Pot+bet) >= bet
50% x(2) >=1
This is 1 = 1 so we breakeven.
If the game pays out 3:
50% x(3) >= 1
This is 1.5 > 1. We are making 0.5 per time we play this game in theory.
Now imagine the coin is weighted, they are tricking us. And we only have 33.33% chance to win. Our equity has decreased!
Again we useEquity x (Pot+bet) >= bet
33.33% x(2) >=1
This is 0.666 < 1 so we lose 0.3333 per time we play this game.
If the game pays out 3:
33.3333% x(3) >= 1
This is 1 = 1. We are breaking even in this.
Without an understanding of pot odds, how are you making calling decisions? How are you making bet sizing decisions? How are you estimating fold equity?
I understand all the things your mentioning, but I cant understand why pot odds specifically can be used to work out calling/folding decisions. All pot odds are is a random calculation on a pot, so why can pot odds be used to compare against equity. Where is the connection between the two.
Im clearly missing something simple.
Pot odds are a standardised expression of your risk relative to the size of the pot. Having to call $1 for a pot of $2 has the same pot odds as having to call $500 for a pot of $1000.
They tell you how much you have to risk relative to how much you stand to gain. This is meaningless until you combine that information with equity because you can't tell if pot odds are "good" until you know how often you win or lose.
In the extremes, with 100% equity any pot odds are favourable; with 0% equity no pot odds are good enough to justify continuing.
Most cases are in between that. When your pot odds equal your equity the EV is 0. When your pot odds are smaller than your equity (e.g. 33% pot odds vs 40% equity), then the EV is positive because you risk less. When your pot odds are larger than your equity, your EV is negative because you risk more.
This idea of risking more or less is a bit clearer when you think of equity shares. If you take your equity and multiply it by the pot size, this gives you your "equity share" of the pot. If that equity share is larger than the amount that you have to risk, then it is good because your hand is worth a larger % of the pot than the amount that you have to risk. If not, then your hand is worth a smaller % of the pot than you have to risk.
Your equity share is both the % of time that you win the hand as well as the % of the pot that you will gain on average, so you want that to be higher than what you must risk to realise that share.
Note that the perspective "flips" when dealing with ratios (but the maths stays the same). For example, 4:1 pot odds is a larger (higher) ratio than 3:1 win odds (equity), but because 4:1 == 20% but 3:1 == 25%, your equity is larger than your pot odds, so it is good. In other words, when dealing with %'s you want your pot odds % to be less than your equity %; when dealing with ratios you want your pot odds ratio to be greater (higher) than your win odds ratio.
I just dont understand why pots odds can be compared to equity. I dont get the link.
Let me try and explain it more clearer. Take a pure equity situation. I take the opponents range, then I take my hand and I compare the equities. This makes complete sense to me, because I'm actually comparing two things. Whereas pots odds seems to be just a number. Sure I can work out pot odds, but why would that have any affect on my strategy. If my opponent never bluffs in a particular spot regardless of good or bad pot odds, I should fold. Likewise if my opponent has a tonne of bluffs in a spot regardless of the pot odds I should be calling.
I just cant get my head around. Very fustrating lol. Thanks for writing your comment, appreciate it
Because equity alone isn't enough to make a decision when doing so requires you to take a risk. You want to know how much you win when you do win, and likewise how much you lose when you do lose. If you don't risk anything, then everything is +EV because you don't lose anything for trying. But that isn't poker.
Think about this: If we play a coinflipping game where I pay you $1.00 every time a fair coin comes up heads, and you pay me $1.10 every time it's tails, would you like to play? Look at the EV for it: EV = (equity * gain) + ((1-equity) * -risk). The coinflip is EV = (.5 * $1) + (.5 * -$1.10) = -$0.05.
What about a roll of a die? I give you a $1 if it comes up 6, otherwise you give me $0.19. How do you know whether it's worth taking my bet? We clearly can't just look at our 1/6 equity and decide because we need to know our risk and how much we gain if we win.
But this isn't a fair comparison. If your opponent never bluffs in a spot, you should fold because you figure that your equity is 0%. As I said above, if you have 0% equity, no pot odds in the universe can justify a call. But you should only call "regardless of pot odds" if you have 100% equity. If you don't have 100% equity, what you really mean is that you win often enough against his range to make calling profitable. How do you do that? You factor in pot odds. This is what lets you decide whether to call given your equity.
It ultimately comes down to EV. If it's not clear still, I suggest opening up excel or some other office, putting in some numbers, and seeing what happens when you tweak the dials of risk and equity, and especially what happens when your pot odds % approach your equity.
Just to be clear, I'm not disagreeing with you. I know pot odds are important but I just cant get my head round them no matter how hard I try. Even your very detailed answers are making no sense to me. I'm gonna keep re reading the answers given to me here and hopefully the penny drops. Thank you for your detailed reponses
If we play a coinflipping game where I pay you $1.00 every time a fair coin comes up heads, and you pay me $1.10 every time it's tails, would you like to play?
But in this situation I know I have heads and you have tails. Therefore its an easy comparison. If Im betting on a sports game and they give me odds. Say its 2/1 for Team A to win. To make that bet, again it's a straight comparison. I just need to work out whether team A is better than team B. Pot Odds are not like that. Pot odds well to me at least, seem to be just odds. Odds tied to nothing (no hand).
And so my point is how can you take pot odds and compare it to equity. It feels like loads of things can wrong with that. I'm struggling to see what the pot odds are telling me. Why does it matter if my equity is above or below pot odds? In my brain poker is simply "do I think this guy bluffs here, and do I have a good hand to call". What happens when you play someone who just bets massive, constantly overbetting. Do you just always fold because of pot odds??
P.S pls dont take my comments as me saying your wrong. I know I'm misunderstanding something. I'm just writing my full thought process, hoping someone can see my misunderstanding.
Thanks for reading.
No worries, I completely understand the feeling.
That's correct - they are not tied to anything other than the pot. As I mentioned above, they are a standardised expression of your risk relative to the size of the pot: how much do you need to pay to play? On their own they mean nothing.
Let me ask then - if we play a game where you risk only $1 to win a whopping $3, should you play or not? No other details about the game.
I would say no, unless i knew what the game was. Because I wouldn't want to give a dollar for something I'm crap at,. But if I knew what the game was and thought I could beat it, then I'd definitely play.
I feel like this might be the issue then. What does it mean to think you can beat the game? I hope not just a feeling, or just winning for the last 10,000 hands.
Take the classic flush draw on the turn scenario for example. Imagine the pot is $37.83 and your opponent jams for another $12.17 and shows you he has a straight with no blockers. The pot is a nice round $50 now, and you only have to call $12.17 for a shot at winning the $50, but unless you hit on the river you're dead. Should you call it? It doesn't matter that this is contrived - you have 19.57% equity and a decision to make.
The only way you can know that this is a game you can beat is if you can correctly make use of the pot odds in this scenario to make a +EV decision. You can't just look at your hand and say "I don't have a made hand, so I fold", because that means you will never get to hit your flush draw and your opponent can bet $0.25 here and you'll always fold, because you don't have a hand. You also can't look at the bet of $12.17 and yolo call just because "it's cheap", because you haven't defined what it means to be cheap. It is your pot odds that define what is or isn't cheap. Therefore you must weigh up your equity with your pot odds and see how much you'd make on average, in the long term. Or in other words, calculate your EV.
I strongly recommend writing out some example scenarios and calculating your EV in each to see how your pot odds have a direct impact on your EV. It is the only way to clear things up.
I feel like this might be the issue then. What does it mean to think you can beat the game? I hope not just a feeling, or just winning for the last 10,000 hands.
In your example with the game with no info. $1 to play, that pays $3 if I win. I would immediately ask what it takes to win at the game. If it was throwing a javelin, then know amount of great odds could get me too play because I can't throw. So that's what I mean by thinking I can beat the game. It needs to be something I think I'm good at and therefore have an edge.
The only thing I dont get it is how the pot odds connect to equity. Lets say an opponent bets big creating bad pot odds., yet I know if the flush hits I likely I win, surely I need to call because otherwise he can just run me over. In theory, the opponent could constantly bully me out of pots with big bets
I understand why it seems that way, but pot odds are only ever good or bad relative to our equity. You can't just say your opponent bets big creating "bad pot odds" because what makes them good or bad is our chance of winning.
This logic is faulty and can be used to justify never folding anything, because "there's a chance you can win". A chance to win (i.e. nonzero equity) is not a justification for calling. Only your EV matters. That is why you wouldn't play a coinflipping game where you pay me $2 if it's tails and I pay you $1 if it's heads - you will lose over the long run. This is entirely down to the pot odds offered combined with your equity, which is what EV shows you. If you are unfamiliar with calculating your EV, you should give it a go and try out different scenarios. It really is the only way to see why this is important.
Yeah I'm gonna take your advice and do some EV calculations, and see what's happening.
Let me just have one last go at trying to understand this lol.
Lets imagine I'm playing a hand. I work out my equity. My equity is 45%. So that means if we played this hand loads of times, I will win 45% of the time.
I then work out my pot odds. To make the call my pot odds are 1:3 or 25%. Now what do these pot odds mean?? Does it mean if I make the call, I win 25% of the time.
I'm nitpicking, but it means you only expect to win 45% of the time. There is no guarantee of course. You'll also need a "reasonable sample" before it converges to an average of 45% but yes.
The pot odds don't care if you've made the call or not, they just are 25% and that's it. Here is exactly what these pot odds mean, nothing more and nothing less: you must pay (risk) 1 for a chance to win 3. That's it. The final pot is 4, and 1/4=25%. Your risk of 1 represents 25% of the total pot.
No, whatever happens after you make the call depends entirely on your equity, not on your pot odds. Your equity determines how often you win (45%). Your pot odds alone have no bearing on whether or not you'll win or lose, they are independent from equity. Now imagine making the call loads of times. Obviously each time you do that you're throwing the 1 into the pot of 3 and you aren't winning every time. That doesn't feel nice on its own, but then you remember how 45% of the time you actually win the 3 (plus your 1 investment) and on 55% of the time you only lose the 1. So on average, for each time you play that exact situation, your ev is +0.8.
Your not nitpicking at all, what you've said is correct. Its not a certainty I win. "Expect" is a much better word.
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