Quote:
The draw is never worth less than the immediate odds of hitting the draw on the very next card.
The draw is never worth less than the price of the
call else we should fold. The actual profitability of the draw depends on the overlay from the pot. In no limit holdem facing 1/2 pot to pot sized bets, the profitability of draw that's going to hit about 18-30% on the next card is not as high as the above statement implies.
I drew this primitive model as an aide to visualizing pot distribution:
Now when you call a 1/2 pot bet with an 18% out draw, you either need to justify this through implied odds, free river cards, pair outs, profitable turn calls, profitable turn bluffs, or profitable river bluffs. What does this tell you about the profitability of other draws, like a monster draw that's going to hit a monster on the turn 33% of the time when calling a pot sized flop bet with 3 pots behind?
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Value hands are different. With monsters, you're earning >pot if there's more money to be won or lost. When you bet something like top pair on the flop? You're not actually hoping for a call because picking up the pot gives an ev of (pot) of course; when you get action with top pair, you've actually reduced your opponent's share in the pot, which naturally increases your share in the pot. So you invested 30% of the pot on a 3 way flop, then you bet a good hand and get one call, which reduces the profitability of your opponent's range to a value between (price of call/pot)* and price of (price of call/pot + overlay expressed as a fraction of the pot).*
*which is exactly what happens in the (nuts + bluffs) vs (bluffcatchers) game.
**which is what happens when a range contains the proper mix of (hands that can call overbets) and (draws of every kind) and (slightly profitable bluffcatchers) and (junk)
If I had to guess at the actual profitability of calling a 1/2 pot flop bet with various hands, it would look like this:
(hands that can call overbets) = range from (>pot) to (75% pot share) on the flop.
(draws) = range from (25% pot share) to (50% pot share)
(profitable bluffcatchers) = (25% pot share) to (65% pot share)*
(junk) not applicable; fold = 0ev = 0% pot share facing a bet.
*I think this value is directly influenced by draw potential to improve to a hand that can raise the likely turn and or river bet.