I used to beat .05nl before black friday and I've read a decent bit on this forum, so I've at least scratched the surface of the game, but somehow I did not get this memo. I've been re-reading the concept of the week posts recently and here are a couple of quotes from them:
Quote 1:
Quote:
Another example is with pocket pairs; say you open to 4BB UTG with 55, one person calls, and CO squeezes to 12BB. There's 22BB in the pot, so you're getting 20:8 or 2.5:1 pot odds to call the bet. Since you need 7.5:1 implied odds to flop a set, you need to collect (7.5:1 - 2.5:1) = 5:1 implied odds postflop, or 40BB to break even. If CO is tight and you know this raise means QQ+, you can probably call profitably expecting to stack him often enough for calling to be +EV, but against a looser player you might consider letting it go (although you can factor in that you can usually expect to snap off a CB of ~20BB against most players).
Quote 2:
Quote:
Logically, we know that if we raise TT UTG to 3bb, folds to him OTB and he shoves for 20bb, we know his range is super strong, probably TT+/AK (and in all actuality, it is probably QQ+/AK ~JJ). If we pokerstove it, we get 34/66. We know we are getting 23:17, so we need 42.5%ee to call. We have 34, so we cannot call. This is simple math.
Can someone explain to me how this kind of math works? I've always been quite good at math in school but this ratio and odds type of math seems to escape me.
Here's how I incorrectly see it:
In quote 1, according to my math there should be 21.5bb in the pot (1.5 blinds + 4 raise + 4 call + 12 squeeze). That's about where my understanding stops. I've never really known where the ratios come from. If we call and win, in my eyes, we win 17.5bb net (i.e. the money in the pot that we did not put in). If we call and lose, we lose 8bb. That ratio would be 17.5:8, or 2.19:1. I don't really know why I do it like this, but that's the only sense I can make out of it that comes out even close to what's written in the quote. The ratio subtraction is obviously simple, but then how does the resulting 5:1 equate to the 40bb needed to break even? Is it from 5 times the 8bb raise you need to call to continue?
Quote 2 is even more confusing to me. I get the pokerstove part, I know how to use pokerstove and how it works. But the ratio gets me again. According to my logic, the pot is 24.5bb (1.5 blinds + 3 raise + 20 3b), and if we call and win we make 21.5bb (the pot minus our money) and if we call and lose we lost 17bb. That ratio would be 21.5:17. Then I have no idea how to get the 42.5% equity out of that that determines whether we should call.
I know it's not correct to be subtracting out "our money" from the calculations to get a net profit since it's not "our money" anymore anyway once it's in the pot, but if I wasn't doing that then I'd get numbers that are even further from correct. I.e. in the second quote I'd bet getting totally off ratios like 41.5:17 (the entire pot after our call vs. the cost of the call)
Last edited by Kelarm; 05-21-2012 at 08:57 PM.
