1 2, drunk guy in game shoves pre, we're last to act, 12 in pot, he shoves 200. we have Q7off (THE COMPUTER HAND!)

is it a call, and if it isn't, what is?

Flip a coin in that spot.

I'm calling with all Kx or better probably.

if you can handle variance then call with anything >50% equity. Personally, I'll call Q7o every single time. There are a couple of hands that will surprise you. Poker stove is your friend.

Q7 is going to win more than ATC. If you're ok with living with variance, call. If you're not, fold.

HOWEVER - I don't know what your experience level is, but I have seem some REALLY impressive angle shooting along these lines. I would want to be very sure drunk guy didn't look at his cards.

Essentially same question but what if you have 3-4 people behind you and you have Ace-anything?

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Seems silly to take such a small edge, you should wait for a spot were you are sure to have an edge. Takin 50% equity against a drunk seems pointless you could at least wait for a pp or ace high. IMO You want to have like 60% equity other wise you may as well flip coins for 100s instead of play poker.

really REALLY bad thinking in a cash game with unlimited BR.

i actually wanted to gamble, to get a stack against him, (i was one with £200) he had like 600 but raised to 200 pre, he definitely didn't look his hand was on the table and i talked myself out of it cos of mr doomed type thinking.

he had 78 off. but who cares, pretty sure it's actually defo a call from math perspective simply cos of the extra 12!

Who said anything about an unlimited bank roll?

If we think that it's even EV to make a call here (and we don't have serious BR considerations) it can actually be tilted more towards a call as having a bigger stack in front of us makes it easier to win more from drunky mc drunky later on in the session when we get big hand vs big hand.

If you can afford to lose the buy in then you shôuld be calling. If you can't you shouldn't be playing.

And look, MrDoomed was unbelievably wrong, you had a huge edge and his hand was dominated!

Seriously though, you know the answer to this, you know Q7 is a slight favorite over ATC. If there was NO dead money in the pot, and you were absolutely SURE he did not look at his cards, this is a snap call all day, every day. If you don't like gambling, then don't play poker. And yes, kiddies, poker IS gambling.

If we have a coin that lands heads 51% percent of the time, I see nothing wrong with this.

What bank roll would you need to sustain that? Im a fairly casual player with a 5k bankroll. Just seems like its a small edge to take when you could get your money in with this guy drawing so much worse.

Meh probably folding with < 50 buyin bankroll. I used to make a living in sit and gos where the my ROI was ~7-8%(super turbos lol) and the swings were not pretty. And in this spot our ROI is ~5%.

That's a matter of comfort. I have a pretty high tolerance for swings. They don't really bother me.

My point is in cash games minus bank roll issues, you don't pass up small edges to wait for bigger ones. That's tournament thinking. In cash games, it's fish thinking. There's nothing stopping you from ALSO taking the big edges. By passing up the small edges you're passing up small profits which is like passing on free money. There are a couple of exceptions to this, but generally speaking cash games are the place where you look for every edge and capitalize. Don't just wait for the obvious ones.

LOL, I'm a working stiff rec player and if I know for certain he didn't look at his cards AND I'm closing the action, I'll call with my like 4 BI pocket bank roll.

Get the money in as a favorite. For around 100bb, there's really not a reason not to. If we were over like 300bb, then I probably fold (assuming there's a 100bb cap to the game). If you can re-buy the same stack then why wouldn't you take any edge?

For a given bankroll, it's very possible you can get a better winrate by passing up small edges with huge variance, because it allows you to play at a higher stakes game with minimal risk of ruin. It's not hard to demonstrate this. So, in a vacuum it makes sense to say "+EV call ldo," but you are not doing yourself any favors if your game involves frequently getting stacks in at 51% (assuming you're a winning player, obv).

To be fair, one would need a much larger bankroll than most 1/2 players have in order to reduce risk of ruin particularly low when we are calling for a guaranteed 50% equity against his range.

This is incorrect. It's IMPOSSIBLE to have a higher win rate by passing up any edge. It may reduce variance yes, but why would you ever play at a higher stakes game short rolled? If you're trying to tell me that's lower variance than playing optimally at a lower stakes game then I'll call you a fool. a two buy in downswing at 2/5 is a 5 buy in down swing at 1/2, and if you're passing up the kind of edges at 2/5 you'd have to pass up to avoid going broke compared to 1/2 then I'd say you're gonna go broke anyway.

Again this is risk aversion and BR considerations as I said. It also makes a difference if we're talking about discretionary income which isn't even really a bank roll if it's just my spending money for the week. If you're only playing with two buy ins then you'll be passing up all kinds of edges to stay in the game and you cn't tell me you're playing optimally. You can still win, but you it's less likely than if you were playing with 20 BI.

I guess my perception of the game is different now. I play on a relatively healthy roll and I can honestly say the only thing I feel when I bust is annoyance that I have to reach into my wallet for more and what could I have done differently. Personally, I'll take 51-49 guaranteed every time.

I think you're missing my point. If your BR is not QUITE high enough to play 2-5 while taking gambles like this, its possible your winrate drops less by passing these spots up than by dropping down to 1-2. This concept has been proven for blackjack IIRC, and the same logic applies here.

Sent from my phone. Therefore, brevity and typos are socially acceptable.

There are a number of ways that passing up an extremely marginal edge can improve your win-rate. One is in the post just below this one that our win-rate may be higher in a 2/5 game even if we have to pass up very small edges in order to sustain a BR in that game. To the extent you don't agree with that being realistic, it certainly would be in a situation like this where you KNOW you have basically exactly 50% equity against his range.

Also, you seem to be assuming that losing this pot would have no psychological effect on hero. A hand that has exactly 50% equity obviously has theoretical value here and we should call. But the 50% of the time we lose a buy-in, our play will almost certainly be affected and we should take that into account upfront. Its probably easiest to conceptualize this by thinking about stop-losses. People have stop-losses because they believe at some point losing will cause them to behave sub-optimally.

On the subject of stop-losses, and a related point, if we take this small edge we risk putting ourselves in a situation where if we lose we are closer to a stop-loss and getting to a point where we have determined we will stop playing. If we are +EV in the game this is obviously bad.

So, you're right, from a pure theoretical point of view where we are all robots with unlimited bankrolls it is obviously non-sensical to fold when we KNOW we have exactly 50% equity. But that isn't a realistic set of circumstances. No one ever has an unlimited bankroll. And if you are playing with such a large roll for the level you are at, assuming you could beat the next level up, it may well make sense to take a shot and want to avoid certain marginal EV situations.

Unfortunately, there isn't as easy a fix for the fact that we are all human, not robots. Losing is inevitably going to have a negative impact on our outlook and cause us to play slightly worse. When the edge is so thin, it may not be worth it.

I would think the vast majority of players would be better off passing up this kind of edge PF. Keep in mind that its important that we are PF with basically no overlay (where all our profit will come from). On later streets we should be increasingly more willing to push small edges because the overlay gets larger. But given the inevitable emotional impact of losing 100bbs 50% of the time. I just don't think its worth it to call here. Our EV is: $.5($212)-.5($198)= $7. Its pretty easy to imagine that, in losing 100bbs, we later make a mistake that costs us more than 3.5 BBs.

I can't get to Poker Stove from here, but is Q7 exactly 50%? I would have guessed it closer to 55-6%.

I think its less than that. If its that much then there is almost certainly a slightly weaker hand that is closer to 50% and the theoretical optimal calling range would be a little wider.

51.766 to 48.234