I admit I don't know much if anything about theory, so if this is a really stupid question, please just let me know, and I'll delete it quickly.

Let's say (to use round numbers) that on the turn, your opponent has a draw that he needs 4:1 to correctly call, and say the pot is $300. So if I bet $100, then he will have to call 100 to win 400 so he's getting his 4:1. For sake of this example, let's exclude whether he has implied odds if he hits, etc.

Now, if this opponent will not call if he is not getting correct odds, (if I bet $101 he will fold) is the correct thing for me to do is bet more than 101 so he folds; or should I bet less than 100, so while he is now getting correct odds to call, I am still making the pot bigger with me as a favorite?

If he won't make a mistake by calling without the correct odds, I am making a mistake by giving him correct odds, if the alternative is he will fold? Is it better to get some additional amount of money into the pot as a 4:1 favorite, or is that a mistake?

Hope that makes sense and isn't too elementary for this forum.
Thanks.

I don't think there is a definite answer to this question, as it depends on the opponent.

I think you could say that you want to do what will earn you the most money.

This can be a lot of different things depending on the situation and villain :

Giving the villain the right odds to call with a worse hand.
Triggering a bluff from your opponent by appearing weak with a weak bet.
Triggering a call by overbetting and making your opponent think you're bluffing when you're not.
etc.

If your opponent will surely fold if the odds aren't right for him to call and if you want him to call you should give him the right odds to call. Be carefull with this if your opponent can improve to get a better hand than yours.

Against other opponents maybe you can make your crazy overbet and giving him absolutely wrong odds to call.
If your overbet would convince your opponent that you're bluffing and if he is convinced that his top pair is better than your hand and that you're just trying to bluff him out of the pot you might be able to go all-in/overbet and have the opponent call if he doesn't like to be pushed around.

It's good to know your opponent and his tendencies and then adapt your game to it.

It all depends on what you expect your opponent to do , what you want to happen and the appropriate action you should take to get there.

Thanks. I should have said that if the player hits his draw, then he wins. So I'm wondering if it is a theoretical mistake to give him correct odds to call with his draw

I understand that if I can get him to call without correct odds, then that is good for me over time whether he hits that particular hand or not. But is it better from a theoretical point of view to bet a smaller amount, giving him better than minimum correct odds, if otherwise I know he will fold.

Or maybe another way to ask it is: him calling any bet over $100 is good for me; Giving him a free card is bad for me. But is a bet more than 0 but less than 100 theoretically correct or a mistake if I know he will fold to any bet over 100?

Might be wrong, but if you bet $101 and you both check on the river hit or miss your profit would be $1. If you bet $99 and the same happens where you both check it down whether he hits or misses his profit would be $1 over the long run.

By giving him correct odds to call you are losing money.

If villain were to call $100 in this exact spot in 5 different hands, then probability says he would win $400 one time and lose $100 four times, breakeven. For hero, the idea is to maximize value. Hero could just blast $300 into the $300 pot and in those 5 different hands we secure the $300 pot uncontested, but shouldn't there be some value to be gained? If we bet $100, then we win $100 four times but we lose $100 plus the $300 in the pot one time, which is breakeven. Your bet should be aimed at maximizing profit, you can't do that making breakeven or worse bets. You should bet an amount that gives the appearance that he is getting the right odds to call as he may believe he has more outs than he does. Say you've flopped top set, or have an overpair like AA and villain has KQs with a flush draw on an uncoordinated low board. Villain could easily believe he may have 3 or even 6 extra outs to go with his flush draw. If you know he will only call correctly, then you can size your bet to take advantage of that by denying him odds to draw with a 9 outer, but giving him correct odds to draw to a perceived 12 outer.

It's best to size your bet big enough to make your opponent pay too much for chasing his draw. He must get wrong odds to call and thus make a mistake. Should he call against his correct odds to call you should be aware not to pay him off when he hits. This way you're not giving him implied odds that could sometimes compensate for chasing a too expensive draw and this will make his call a mistake over time.

As far as I know it's never right to give a drawing hand that would surely be the best hand the correct odds to continue.

You want to take the pot there and then while you're ahead.
You want him to fold or you want to make him pay too much.

Great explanations in previous posts.

This. There is no reason to give him good odds, unless you think that he is on a nut/good flush draw and you have a full house, you'll most of the times win is whole stack when he hits.


I think that the situation is way easier to understand if we switch the roles. If you are on a Ace high flush draw, unpaired board, and your opponent bet something that gives you 4to1 for a call. Is it a mistake to call or a mathematical logical thing to do?

This is a typical question when players start to think more deeply about poker, but I don't think you're going to get the answer that you're looking for because your framing the question wrong. What I think that you're asking is the following:
When I have a made hand should I size my bets so that my opponent does not have the odds to call when he has a typical drawing hand such as a flush draw?

However, that is now what you asked, instead you asked the following:
What I have a made hand and I *know* the Villain has a flush draw, then should I bet big enough that he doesn't have the odds to call?

Now the answer to this second question is that you should bet an amount that makes the opponent indifferent between calling and folding. And it kinda seems from your example that your opponent is going to fold then anyways.

But the problem with your example is that it assumes that you know what your opponent holds when in reality you will never know this and your opponents range of hands will include hands which are not draws. In other words, you need to think about how to maximize the EV of your hand in terms of your opponents entire range of hands. When you think at this level, you will find out that there's not a good reason to assume that we should be making the opponent indifferent to calling with a flush draw, we're just as likely to want to make him indifferent to calling with 2nd pair or a gut shot or really just about any mediocre hand.

And then lastly, once you get past that level of thinking, you need to realize that inorder to maximize the EV of your particular hand, then you need to think about how your hand works in relation to your entire range. For example, if you only have 1 combo of a strong hand, then even if your opponent has a significant amount of draws, then you might not want to bet this hand and instead put it in your checking range to strengthen your checking range from the potential of a Villain over-betting. And in this way, you'll be maximizing the EV of your hand and the hands in all your ranges.

If you bet less than $100 you will be losing out in the long run if the player always calls at least up to the correct odds, you are making a mistake in this case by giving away equity cheap. If the player calls past the correct odds then you start to lose money due to losing profit, effectively not taking the cheap discounted equity available.
If you bet less and the player sometimes folds, you are making a mistake and the opponent is making a mistake every time s/he folds. The size of the mistake depends on how often the player folds, you always want to avoid this if possible, it is better for you to get the fold than to ever allow this player in with good odds.

The calling opponent, with 20% equity,will make money every time you charge less than 20% of the final pot, or 4:1. If the opponent is making money - it has to come from somewhere and it is from you, you are giving away equity for a reduced price.

It is a bit difficult in practice to know what odds to give, you would like to give more for some type of hands than others. The player could have a gut-shot and a small bet pays off, obviously a flush draw needs a bigger bet.

Isn't it right that however much I bet, even if it is obviously right for my opponent to call, its more profitable than betting an amount that makes him fold?

If I knew the maximum my opponent would call that would be the size of my bet.

Edit: Actually that's ridiculous.

If villain will simply win 20% of the time and we will win 80%, and no future bets will go in:

EV of villain folding = $300
EV of villain calling a $90 bet = $294
EV of villain calling a $110 bet = $306
EV of villain Calling a $100 bet = $300 (which makes us indifferent to villain calling

Imagine you are a casino, and are trying to figure out how to determine the payouts on roulette. If you pick one number you have a 1 in 38 chance of winning. If the casino pays out 37-1 they will break even.

One choice would be to offer 15-1 odds. The casino would have a huge edge and would win a lot of money - or not, because even stupid people have limits, and most people wouldn't play, so they would take in a very small amount of money. Or they could offer 40-1 - actually giving people good odds to play. They would bring in lots and lots of money in action. But they would actually lose money because they are paying a higher price than is warranted.

Instead they offer 35-1. It is bad odds for a player to play, but it considered okay by enough people that it still brings in money and the house profits. For those who don't like the odds, they don't play - and this is okay.

Offering anything better than the true odds for someone to draw is going to lose you money. Offering them worse than they should get is going to gain you money. If you have someone who will play for bad odds - charge them to do so. If they won't play, it is no big harm done. But giving them cheap cards to beat you because you simply want more money in the pot is a recipe for disaster.

Thanks for all the great responses. They each gave me another way of looking at it and trying to understand it. I think I've seen the light on this particular issue.

Just as an aside, I've actually read many poker books and have a significant amount of play (for a live player) but I feel like I've hit a wall and stopped improving, and am not really sure what it is I should be studying to get to a higher level of play. To use a military analogy, I sort of feel like I've learned a lot of of what we'd call TTPs (tactics, techniques and procedures) but can't really tie those back to the overall strategy I'm trying to achieve or the strategic principles behind the tactics. So I'm sort of like looking at all these things I "know" I'm supposed to do, but then trying to see if I can answer "why"?

Thanks to everyone for not flaming me for what I now see was a pretty basic question, and helping me to articulate the "why".

+1

Also, keep in mind that we never know villain's exact hand, so sometimes we bet an amount that makes a mistake against his drawing range but induces a mistake from other parts of his range (weak made hands, etc.).

Furthermore, in the theoretical sense, it may be more beneficial to include at least a basic model of river play for this case. If you bet $100 on the turn and he calls, pot will be $500 going into the river. Are you going to fold if he bets $200 on a scary river?

Another thing to think about is pot control from an opponent OOP.

Someone drawing to a flush can cbet or donk bet equal or less than 1/3rd of the pot OOP and by doing so give him/herself right odds and maybe an opponent who will just call instead of bet more with a made hand.

Should he choose not to cbet or donk bet OOP it's very easy for top pair to bet a lot more than 1/3rd of the pot (= his break-even odds with a flush draw), say for example 2/3rd of the pot and this would make it too expensive to chase the draw.

If villain would cbet/donkbet 1/4th of the pot OOP and you have the best hand on the flop and you suspect that villain is on a draw it's probably a good idea not to just call his small bet but to raise at that moment.

By raising his bet instead of just calling you can prevent villain to get a next card too cheaply.

What are the conditions? Have to have a lot more info to answer this..... such as
His image?
Both chip stacks? Because 300 is nothing to 33k but a lot more to 3k or even 1500?
Positions?
Who lead the betting?
Do you have any of the suit he needs?
Whats the size of the game?


i really think the 'proper' amount of the bet here, in proportion to the villians stack is the answer you are looking for... right????? i.e what bet will induce him to realize his fold equity is too high to ignore??

I think other people are over-complicating this. OP is asking a theoretical question and specifically ignoring realistic factors. The only mistake of betting exactly $100 is that you're not giving your opponent a chance to make a mistake. But if you're 100% sure Villain will make the correct decision, then mathematically no it's not a mistake (see Paul Valente's post) except technically for the fact that your bankroll is not infinite so you shouldn't be making 0-EV gambles if you can avoid them. (If all you made were 0-EV bets, then after enough time you'd be broke unless you quit while ahead.)

You want to do it when you can beat him even if he catches his draw.

Something that definitely should be considered is the implied odds -> what is left in your stacks that could be bet after next card.

You make more money by guiding your opponents into making mistakes.

For me, it depends on the player. If the player is a fast player that runs to the turn and river a lot, im not going to want to see him in the pot. If it is a really tight player, I might give him odds because I know he will not raise me with a draw.

This is really really simple to solve. Mathematically you should give them the odds, but practically you should never give your opponent correct odds.

Let me explain using the example and no implied odds (so there will be no money bet on the river):

Pot is $300 and he has exactly the odds to call if you bet $100.

If you bet $75,000, you win $300 exactly.
If you bet $100, you win $400 80% of the time for an ev of $320. But this is the maximum EV you can get if your opponent plays properly and comes with high variance.

But of course, the real value comes from getting him to call with less than ideal odds, as most players will. So if instead you bet $150, or $200, the maximum ev loss is only $20 if they fold, but if they call you can see your ev goes up considerably.

I don't think you read the other posts in this thread. It has been shown that it is most definitely a mistake mathematically.

If you bet more than 100 you're plus ev and if you bet less you're minus ev. The correct play would be to bet 101 and have him fold thus securing the win. Betting 100 would be neutral ev and probably minus ev when you do consider the implied odds

Intuitively the $100 bet makes sense to be ev, but I don't know why I keep getting the wrong calculation. Could someone show me where my error is?

With $300 in the pot, you bet $100 to win $400 80% of the time ~ $320.

This seems like it's a mistake but I can't put my finger on what I'm doing wrong.

and 20% of the time you lose your 100$, i guess
and you are not minus ev if you bet less, thats ******ed logic, you are just less+ev than if he folded the hand. Even if you check you are not -ev, the only -ev there is if you pay guy off when he hits.
Also you can technically call it turning your hand into a bluff if you know your opponent will fold his draw if he doesnt get the correct odds.

Equity is really what you you get in the long run, or what you own, of the pot, but this is equity of the full or final pot. (including the call the amount)
The pot starts as $300, you bet $100, but the call takes it to $500, so you 'own' 80% of $500 = $400, the bet you risked was $100, so you effectively put in an extra $100 and got exactly an extra $100 back. (no gain or loss)
With equity you work out how much of the final pot belongs to you, you can also use odds and pot odds to get the same answer.
If you bet $100 you give the opponent 4:1 odds in a $400, it is even.
Here you just left out the call amount, it's easily done.
At the $300 point the opponent 'owns' 20% = $60
Every $1 you bet and the opponent calls you 'own' 80% of the extra $2 = $1.60, you gain $0.60.
For the opponent once the cost of staying in is equal to the equity return, of the final pot, it becomes a break even. Every $1 extra bet makes it $0.60 worse, so $100 makes it $60 worse, this now exactly balances the amount of original opponent equity from the $300.
It is easy to inter-mix pots odds and equity and make a mistake I find it better to keep in probilites(equities if ties matter) and final pot sizes, not pot odds.
Pokerstove gives it's output in equity not odds.