I replied to this in another response but this deserves a separate comment.

Pot commitment has never been a feeling. If you should fold, you fold. If you should call, you call. People in this thread are creating a straw-man to tear down. You're doing that here by saying "pot commitment is what bad players do".

Miller is not writing a book about playing bad poker, minimizing EV, or anything like that.

Pot commitment is pure and simple about planning. Lots of threads people bring up some situation that they should never be in and ask "what do I do?". They NEVER want to hear the advice to "avoid that situation".

It's amazing to me the number of people that think poker is a one-street game where you just wake up miraculously on the river having not been awake previously in the hand.

Long story short: I don't understand the purpose of a thread that just exists to say: "Don't make -EV plays", without addressing any of the substance of the theory of pot-commitment.

There lots of times where you're pot-committed BECAUSE you can make a +EV call on the river. But importantly just because you make a +EV call on the river doesn't mean the EV of the entire hand was positive.

Well put.

any response to this? I actually got the same answers as Notam, except for Q2 I got roughly the same answer as Q1 based on my equity calc in pokercruncher. Not sure if Notam's odds calculation include the fact that Ah2s and Ah7c are not possible.

Nice thread will have to re read

Interesting thread.

Lots or ref to PNLH. The target for that book was losing players in the height of the boom when poker rooms were filled with players who would stack off with crazy ****.

Under those circumstances a simple understanding if the pot commitment concept and how to plan around it could make a small loser into a small winner.

The concept has value vs opponenents with a wide range. What makes an opponents range wide? 1) the extent of our hand reading ability. 2) the tendencies of our opponent.

If we have no hand reading ability at all our opponent will always have a range of ATC. If our opponent is a moron or a maniac they will have something close to ATC. In both these situations pot comittment is a valuable concept that will protect our stack and prevent us from getting bluffed off our hand or free rolled by draws for our remaining stack. In 2005 these conditions were the norm for a lot of players.

In 2014 this is not really the case. If you are reading this forum you are likely improving your hand reading skills. Today the average player in LLSNL games will have at least some clue where their hand stands given the board and perhaps the action... Some of the time anyway. Thus today we should be narrowing players ranges more than say in 2005. That being the case we can make more refined decisions to exploit the range we assign our opponent and the tendencies we've observed of them or players like them.

Afterall pot comittment is just taking an aggregate view of our likely EV and providing a general rule to maximize it while protecting our stack.

As with anything, the more you improve and gain information the less you need to rely on "rules of thumb" and can assess each situation individually. It doesn't mean the underlying concept of pot comittment and planning around it is invalid. It means as you improve you will be sussing out the exceptions and maximizing expectation.