The flop call with over 25 bets in the pot doesn't lose you money, it's mostly the preflop money that we lose.

Snap fold

You are missing that "pricing yourself in for correct calls on later streets" is one of the COSTS of an incorrect pre-flop call.

Here's a simple model. Suppose we are on the button with a small pair (a setmining hand) and we are determining whether to call 4 bets, after a raise, a re-raise, and a cap.

Which one of these scenarios is more likely:

1. We are paying 4 bets for 3 cards.
OR
2. We are paying between 5 and 6 bets for 4 cards.

I say it's 2. The one or two calls on the flop may both be correct when made. Nonetheless, they are built into the price of the initial pre-flop call.

Thats sounds complicated, to simplify, which part do you disagree with in what I said: "calling one bet in a 25+ bet pot to hit your set isn't where you lose the money, you are mostly losing the preflop money"

You don't lose any money in a call with proper odds, you get back a little more than what you put in (for that call).

That's not true, but it's not true in an interesting way that I suspect many players don't understand.

Let's go back to our setmining example. If we assume a model of flopping a set or folding, we know we are 1 in 7.5 to make a set. Which means that we would want 7.5 x 4, or 30 small bets, in the pot if our set is always good. (In practice, we'd want about 10 x 4, or 40 small bets, in the pot because our set will not always be good. But just follow the math here.)

However, if we assume we are going to put an extra 1 or 2 small bets (let's make it an average of 1.5) on the flop, which will be mathematically correct calls, because of the pot size, this adds an additional 5 percent chance of hitting a set as we are now getting four cards. So we will now have about an 18 percent chance of hitting a set. But we are paying, on average, 5.5 small bets to do it. So we'd want 5.5 x 5.5, or 30.25 small bets, in the pot if our set is always good. In other words, even though the flop calls are correct, our expected value on the pre-flop call went DOWN a little, so that we need a slightly larger pot size to make the money back.

What happened here? It's simple-- one of the costs of making an incorrect call on one street is pricing yourself in for future calls.

I can remember one hand that I posted on 2+2 long ago-- I wish I could remember where-- in a 1/2 online limit game where I had ace-king and for various reasons underestimated the strength of my opponents' hands, and by the 3rd or 4th bet on the turn I had the 11 to 1 odds to call for my gutshot, which I then hit (I was up against 2 sets as it turned out) to win a huge (38BB) pot. And the reason I posted the hand was to make precisely this point-- that I had made a bunch of incorrect calls drawing near-dead and by the time I figured out my overs were no good and all I had were the 4 outs, I had priced myself in for more calls.

If you want the non-mathematical explanation for this phenomenon, it's actually pretty straightforward. Part of the pot that you are calling to win on the flop IS YOUR OWN MONEY that you already put in. When you are getting 20 to 1 or whatever on your flop call, only 16 of that 20 came from the rest of the table. 4 is what you already put in. At the time of the flop call, it's a sunk cost so you have to try to win it back. But pre-flop, it hasn't been sunk yet-- you can decide not to put it in the pot in part so that you don't have to put additional money in to try to win it back.

what % of pots are being capped pre?

Of course this is understood, that's exactly what we mean when we say "he won't be able to make up the preflop money" so he should fold.

So I stand by what I said. Once the money is in the pot, the call with 25+ bets in there doesn't lose you money.

Yeah, sometimes you'll get a set over set, or the board will have a flush, so the flop call is close to beak even.

As I said, the preflop money we need to make up is 10 to 15 bets!, so focusing on a breakeven bet on the flop isn't worth it. I'm done discussing it.

I am not sure if your argument is semantic or substantive.

If you are just being semantic, of course, a call when you have proper odds to call doesn't "lose you money".

But that's not the issue here. Rather, the issue is whether GETTING PRICED IN to call on later streets is one of the costs that needs to be considered in making a call on an earlier street. And the answer is that it is, because one of the things that will make your later call +EV when you make it is that your own money is now in the pot and you have to chase it.

I think this is a pretty important question.

My totally uneducated guess is that in a typical "crazy" game it is like 20 - 25%.

this is so ****ing key. I think you and chasqui are pretty much saying the same thing though.

this - or more ... the CP8 is notorious for this... was in 2005 and still is. guys come down from the 15 and the 30 and are floored by the action.

but I don't understand why this matters except if every pot is being capped pre then we should prob call right? haha. I think it's more important as to who is doing the raising in the hand. it was a crazy game in part because we had 2-3 guys who were straddling every round and then there was 3-5 bets going off (back raising) from those straddlers. But if any of the tags or the passives did the raising (not the idiots straddling or back raising) then that raised caution with me. Same if I 3b a straddler and then someone in later position 4b me - then that raises caution. If i 3b and a cc'ing douche bag in front of me back raises then I'm probably re-raising his pathetic ass with the majority of my range.

Let me be clear. If the Asain passive hadn't capped it - I would've.