Before asking my question I will give the definition of pot odds and effective odds so any reader unaware of these terms can be picked up to speed and benefit from any discussions from this post.

Pot odds:
The ratio of the current pot to the bet you need to call
ex: pot is $100, opponent bets $100. Now the pot is $200 and you need to call $100 to stay in. Thus your pot odds are 200:100. People use the reduced version so its 2:1

Effective odds:
The pot odds when factoring your opponent's future bets.
ex. flop comes and your opponent bets $100 into a $100 pot. Your pot odds are 2:1 but you believe your opponent will bet the turn for another $100. So in reality you need to pay $200($100 now and $100 on the turn) to win $300(current pot($100) + opponents flop bet($100) + opponents turn bet($100)). So the effective odds are 3:2 or more commonly 1.5:1
Note for those confused as to why the pot isn't $400 on the turn in these calculations it's because you haven't actually put in your money yet. Yes its true that when the turn comes you will have called so in reality the pot would be $400, we don't include it because we are using effective odds to assess what our risk to reward ratio is. We want to know how much we will GAIN, thus we shouldn't include the money we will invest to see the turn.

Since pot odds don't factor in future bets, they aren't useful in determining a profitable call with more than one card to come. Why? Because as we saw in the definition of effective odds if I have drawing odds of 1.8:1 after the flop, initially it was profitable to call because the pot odds were higher, 2:1. However after further consideration using effective odds we realized our pot odds are actually 1.5:1 thus making it a non profitable call....Or so they say.

My Question:
Fundamentally pot odds don't work with more than one card to come because your drawing odds are your chances of winning BY THE RIVER, so those chances are only true if you plan on seeing every street to the river. And unless your opponent plans on checking until the river your going to have to make more calls in the future. This is why we consider future bets in determining our true pot odds(effective odds)...but I don't get why...

Here is my confusion. Why should we care what happens on future streets? It seems overly complicated calculating effective odds because we need to guess how much our opponent will bet in the future. There's no real way to know with accuracy in my opinion. Why not simply use the drawing odds of hitting on the turn only, rather than the total drawing odds? This makes sense to me. Its the flop, I want to see the turn, so I'm deciding if paying to see the turn card is worth it. Why would I factor in the river at this point. When the turn comes I can decide what to do about the river at that point in time. This makes sense to me because when the river comes the drawing odds will have changed. Perhaps my opponent's outs have increased, perhaps mine have increased. It makes sense to see the cards and decide at that point.

Poker is complicated. Pot odds are easy to calculate. I haven't heard much of effective odds, but I have heard of implied odds, which is basically the same concept.

It's pretty simple why we care about the implied odds and not just immediate pot odds. Because sometimes you don't have direct pot odds to call a bet, but if you almost have odds, you likely have the implied odds to make continuing profitable.

Let's say you have AhJh in position on the turn and the board is KsTh7h2d. The pot is 100 and you have 400 behind. Out of position bets $100. If you're behind, you have 10 outs to the nuts (not including a board pairing heart, and technically there could be less if your opponent blocks some outs). You may have as many as 15 outs if your ace is a live out along with board pairing hearts and 18 outs if your J is a live out (like if villain is bluffing with the best hand with a hand like T9, 87, 76, etc.)

Let's say you have 15 outs. 15 out of 46 cards is about 32% (technically it is 15 out of 44 cards since your opponent has 2 cards himself, but he could also have a hand like KQ so one of your Q outs may not be live). You don't actually have the pot odds to call a pot size bet here, since you need 33% equity to call. But as a heuristic, you know you are going to have the implied odds to call, because you ALMOST have the pot odds to call, and if you can win more money some of the time (possibly all of the money some of the time), then you know your call on the turn will be +EV.

If your equity is 32%, if you only had $100 left on the turn to call off into the $100 pot, your EV would be $-4 (because althea pot will be $300 if you call and you win 32% of the time, so your expected value is $96 minus the $100 you put in times call). But let's say after you hit 32% of the time when, you actually win all of the money (the entire $400 stack plus the $100 in the pot on the turn) 33% of the time, and the rest of the time you only with the $300 pot. Now your EV is +$17.

And things can get vastly more complicated than this. When you're on the flop or turn, you have to factor in your ability to bink and get paid on turn or river, or pick up a backdoor on the turn, and you have to factor in the possibility thst sometimes you have the best hand with a hand like AJ calling the flop, and sometimes you won't have the best hand, but you will get to bluff later to steal the pot and that will be a source of EV for you.

In reality, it is EV we care about, not pot odds or implied odds, but as you alluded to, this is very difficult to calculate. The more you study the game and apply your studying when you put in your hours ro play, the more you will be able to identify the spots where you will be able to call a bet on an earlier street with or without the direct pot odds, because you know you can get paid off if you bink or you may be able to bluff on a later street. Furthermore, you can identify spots where you can even raise bets as a bluff, such as when an opponent is cbetting the flop too frequently with air and maybe you have a hand like a gutshot with 1 over and a backdoor flush draw on the flop, so you check raise him. You know it is profitable because sometimes he just folds and you win, and when he calls, sometimes he folds a later street, or you improve on a later street and you win a very big pot. Ultimately you want to get to that point in poker. Learning pot odds is like the first step, and implied odds is sort of the next step in eventually crossing that bridge.