I'm getting back in to playing after a ten year hiatus.

A feature that I'm getting to like is Pokerstars cashout - for those that don't know about it, it gives you the option when you're all-in (with cards still to come) to forfeit the pot and take a payout based on your equity less a 1% charge. In the long run you'll win the same amount of money as if you let it play out, less the fee and I like the reduction in variance that can otherwise blow a session when your AA gets cracked by some muppet with 74o and a hunch.

What I'm wondering is whether this facility gives an incentive to get all-in more aggressively earlier in the hand, in situations where you are likely to have more equity, or this equity is eroded if your draw misses.

For example - Nut flush draw and overcards on the flop you could have 60%+ equity, if you whiff on the turn this could drop to ~30% and a big bet from the villain could put you in a tight spot.

Or (the hand that put my session in the red tonight) my 91% equity on the flop with a sneaky set of 3s dropping to 2% on the turn when the villain spiked a third Jack...

What's up Papa Bear? Interesting little side bet. I can understand the temptation.

Ultimately though, with exotic bets, I always come back to this concept, why is the casino offering this bet? The answer is always the same. It is a good bet for the casino. The site wins 1% on this bet, minimum. This probably happens 1,000 times a day for them, if not exponentially more. That adds up, I'm sure. They are not even in this hand, where do they get off taking a portion of the pot? And, if the cashed out player wins the pot, then the casino takes the whole pot. Huh? The casino is now taking down pots in poker games? Can you imagine this in a live game? The dealer just scoops up the entire pot and puts it in that little lock box. Hilarious.

We all know that any time we get involved in a wager with the house, the house always gets the better end of the deal. As a matter of general principle, I don't want to give the casino any more of my money then they already wrangle away from me.

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If you think you are ahead, why would you take the insurance? If you have AA and your opponent has KK, you are an 80% favorite. You are entitled to 80% of that pot. You are selling it for 79%.

You talk about avoiding short term variance, but in the short term you are very likely to win 100% of that pot, and you are selling it for 79%.

Finally, don't forget and don't underestimate the fact that variance sometimes works in our favor. If you hold KK and villain holds AA, you are still going to win 20% of the time. You are entitled to 20% of that pot and you are selling it for 19%. But you may hit a King on the Turn or River. In which case, you would have won 100% of the pot and you sold it for 19%.

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I think what this comes down is a fundamental way to view EV and how it impacts our game. Peter Clarke writes about EV and he calls it the currency we need to use to measure our poker success by. If a certain move is "worth" +8 EV, we may win 8, we may lose 8, or any other amount, in the individual instance, but over the long term, if we make that move 1,000 times or 10,000 times or 100,000 times, we will gain +8. We can't control short term luck so we need to make decisions based upon EV. It is either correct or it is not. It is either a +EV move or it is not. You can open limp with pocket 2's under the gun and then call a big raise out of position and you might get lucky and hit a set of 2's, but these were negative EV moves that you made pre-flop. Over the long term, you will lose money if open limp with pocket 2's utg and then call a big raise oop.

He also says "EV's are not monies yet, they are baby monies that will grow up one day." Funny, but he's right. This is the way to look at this decision. We can't just give up another 1% (or more) of our equity. The margins in poker are thin enough already. Giving away points is going to kill us in the long term.

Best of luck to you.

Magnum

Totally agree Magnum - you can see why P* are doing it; in the long run they earn 1% of all cashed out pots. Nice thing is it's totally up to you whether you want to pay for this service or not.

True - in the long run you'll win more by not using cashout, everything else being equal. Key question for me here though is does getting tilted when your AA gets cracked one time in five cost you more that 1% in the long run? I think everybody has their own answer to that...

The situation I'm really curious about though is when you have a monster draw with no showdown value but 80% equity on the flop, that you might be forced to fold to a bet on the turn or river if the board blanks. If we could get stacks in on the flop and bank 80% (-1%!) of the pot every time would that be +EV compared to a more conservative line.

Now I am getting confused. I just crunched some numbers. Maybe I am not doing this right?

----------------So here is how I calculated it, is this not right?

Hero has a nut flush draw on the flop and only the nut flush is going to win it for Hero.
Therefore we have 9 outs and basically 36% equity.

We are both all in for 200 total bb. (100 each)
Therefore if I cash out, I get paid 35% of 200bb = 70bb.
If I do that 100 times, I am +700bb

If I let the hand play out, and I play it 100 times:
I win 200bb, 36 times = +7200bb
I lose 100bb 64 times = -6400
I end up plus +800bb

divide by 100 again and the cashout is +7bb and play it out is +8bb.

So the EV for taking the cash out is -1bb.

Is that correct. (If so, BTW, should I not be shoving every time I have a nut flush draw? I don't think anyone recommends that).

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But.....
If we have 54s, hearts,
and V1 has AK, no hearts
and v2 has 88, no hearts
and we all get all in for a total of 300bb.

If flop is 3h6hAs.
Hero has 57%
V1 has 39%
V2 has 4%

So if we cash out we get 56% of 300 = 168bb
If we play it out 100 times then we win 300bb 57x = +17,100
we lose 100 43x = -4300

Total EV for cash out = +168bb

Total EV for play it through = 17,100-4300 = 12,800 (divided by 100)= +128

So EV for the cashout option is +40

Is that correct?

I'm getting myself all confused with this math.

Magnum

Yep; not a good idea if you've got <50% equity (my simple maths says if two players get all-in they've each contributed half of the pot, ignoring blinds and contributions from other players who have folded).

You'll have more than that though with a monster combo flush/oesd/overcards or something similar, but still have no real showdown equity.

As an aside there's some fascinating psychology in how fish use cashout; some will use it even when they only have 10-20% equity and be left with a microstack that they continue to play with without reloading. They're the kind of players who will leave the table when they have lost all of the money that they sat down with. Anything that stops fish from getting up and leaving must be a good thing...

This was bothering me and I felt like I was butchering those equations. So I went to the probability forum on 2+2 and asked the math wizzes. This was the reply.

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"Let's look at it another way. I'm assuming all of your money is in the pot before you have the option to cash out or play. So you have 0. No matter what happens in the hand, you will never lose money (your balance will not be below the 0 that it is right now).

In situation 1, if you take the cashout, you will have 70BB. If you play it out, you have 36% equity, and therefore you will get, on average, 72BB. You are losing 2BB (2/72 or 2.8%) by taking the sure thing deal.

In situation 2, again you come to the decision point with 0 in your stack. A cashout gives you 56% or 168. Playing it out nets you, on average, 171BB. You lose 3BB, or 3/171 1.8% by taking the deal.

You are always going to be better off (in the long run) by playing it out - because you are getting the true % as compared to the true % - 1. Any time someone offers less than your true odds you are losing something. But you can actually be better off in the short run because psychologically you don't want to deal with the ever present chance of getting stacked."

I think I got to the same place with my gorilla math!

Magnum - you quoted Peter Clarke earlier. I've mostly read The Grinder's Manual, but have a way to go in integrating the concepts in to my play. How have you found adapting his 6-max approach to full ring tables?

Yes, I could say the same thing you said about having a ways to go. There is definitely a lot there to wrap your head around. I have a lot of the old poker books and a lot of the modern poker books, including, in addition to the Grinder's Manual, Modern Poker Theory by Acevedo (which is very dense and is 6 max GTO) and Advanced Concepts in NLHE by Cichy (which is an easier read and contains Full Ring ranges based on Poker Snowie artificial intelligence). Both great books.

I must admit that I keep coming back to the Grinder's Manual as my default source. What I like about it is that it explains the why of it all. For instance, why do we 3 bet and under what circumstances or why do we use smaller bet sizes when steal raising. Then, understanding the why and how, rather than rely on pre-printed hand ranges, we can fool around with it all and come up with our own ranges. It also allows for the fact that the game is dynamic and certain hand ranges may be appropriate under certain circs and not under others. I think that understanding why we are supposed to take certain actions, rather than just following other players' scripts is the goal of poker study. The lessons can easily be applied to Full Ring, which is my game of choice because once Covid is finally over I do hope to play live games again.

Magnum