Poker Oyunkuram

Raising middle pairs over limpers in the early stages (regardless of buy-in) is somewhat risky.  You are likely to get better long term value from set mining cheaply. In the early stages, loads of players are correctly playing for implied odds. A five times raise is not a big hit to their stack and you mostly just don’t narrow the field enough. You’re immediately faced with a more difficult decision regarding a continuation bet man you’ve got over cards on the board.  Why not open raise, but once there are limpers, avoid attacking them when its deep stacked and when the blinds are very small.

You also can’t forget about the 2:1 odds. If the pot is 1.5BBs pre flop, there is 1 limper, that makes it 2.5BBs. You now decide to raise to three big blinds, making the pot five.5BBs and the limper (assuming everyone else folds) has to call 2BBs to see a flop with 5.five big blinds in it. As at result he is getting good odds to make a call here at nearly 3:1.

You have to consider the fact that you’re likely to never be worse than a three to one under dog pre-flop. But there is a problem. Or rather a couple of problems.

Firstly your problem is bet-ability of a marginal hand. You could end up with three gapped connectors versus big slick. The flop comes down 5 J Q. Even though your ahead, it’s difficult to know how much you can bet here? Can you even call a standard Cbet with bottom pair out of position? What if you lead into the pot? What happens when he calls? Now do you bet once more here? How deep a hole are you going to dig for yourself with your bottom pair hoping that it is good?

What about if you have 33 pre flop? With a board full of over cards,it’s still tough to bet even though statistically your opponent will have missed as well?

So yes, you had correct odds pre flop, if you could get to showdown for something approximating that pre flop investment. However, in big stack scenarios you really shouldn’t. You are going to have to play 3 more streets of poker before you get to showdown.

Concurrently, this also creates the 2nd problem. You are out of position and that’s not good poker tournament strategy. This means when you do make you hand you will win less. You will also lose more chips, because your opponent can bet you off a better hand because he has position.

So really, for these deep stack situations, pot odds are completely irrelevant IMHO. This is where you should be measuring up your opponents stack.. i.e. what is the size of my stack and my opponents stack. If we are talking about five percent or less of my stack, I am calling with a LOT of cards. If they have AA, and I have 53s, all the better. If they have AA, and I want to be playing my little cards. But if the raise is getting up to around 10% of my stack, then I fold all the weired stuff, except PPs. Still, I am only concerend about the size of the bet compared to my effective tournament stack.

My cards may be 56s and be up against big slick. But unless I make and OESD, Flush draw or 2 pair or better, I will be surrendering pretty much every pot on the flop especially if I am OOP. Once in a while you might just want to check here if you hit a low pair, especially if you can put your opponent on a hand.

In Gus Hansen’s poker tournament strategy book, he often sounds angry at himself for calling early position raises from his big blind blind. Understandably, these regrets come about as soon as you see the flop which invariably are difficult to play. Now he has physical tells to work with, and, as mentioned, he is Gus Hansen. We don’t have physical tells and we are not Gus. Take into account, your opponent is weaker than the players Gus plays against. It’s also important to know if your opponent can get away from a top pair, or are more willing to let it ride.

Guess I’m trying to say is that if you can afford it, implied odds are much more important than pre-flop pot odds. You might choose to play a given hand anyway, but do it for the reason of implied odds and not pot odds, if that makes sense. You have to know how to calculate poker odds when getting into hands like this becuase it may very well determine your long term success in tournaments. Just knowing Poker rules are not enough to win, you need strategy too.

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