Originally Posted by JKDS

For the purposes of this example, we are going to assume that HERO has JhTh, and that VILLAIN has AcKd and both hands are face up.
The board is 2h8hKcQs with a pot of $.40
Villain bets out $.20, should we call him?

Since both hands are face up, we will get no future money out of villain when the river comes, as he will simply fold to any bet we make. So the question is, are we getting the proper pot odds to call this bet? I.E., is calling this bet +EV???

well, we go back to our simple equation
EV=p(W)*gain - p(L)*loss
EV=9/45 * $.60 - 36/45* $.20 (it is out of 45 since we know villains hand)
EV=$.12 - $.16 = --$.04

So the pot is laying insufficient odds to justify the call, and it is thus -EV. Put another way, if we called this bet over a large sample size, we would expect to lose money!

Originally Posted by OhBollocks

I is drunk but it looks like you forgot 5 outs (9c,9s,9d,As,Ad)

Originally Posted by mrhappy333

There is a pot odds page, but more info explained in different ways is always better.
http://www.flopturnriver.com/start_pot_odds.html
Thanks for posting!

Originally Posted by mrhappy333

Is there a much easier calculation to do. This is alot to do if your playing a game. It just seems overwhelming all the math.

Originally Posted by Example

$0.02/$0.05 No Limit Holdem
6 players
Converted at weaktight.com

Stacks:
UTG Hero ($6.31)
UTG+1 ($5.71)
CO ($10.91)
BTN ($3.19)
SB ($5.18)
BB ($6.00)

Pre-flop: ($0.07, 6 players) Hero is UTG
Hero raises to $0.25, 2 folds, someone calls $0.25, 2 folds

Flop: ($0.57, 2 players)
Hero checks, someone bets $0.35, Hero ?

Originally Posted by mrhappy333

ok, for example here we have a gutshot.
4 jacks * 4 = 16% to hit by the river.
theres approx .95 cent in the pot
its .35/.95= aprox .38
so were getting almost 3 to 1 to call correct?
so now what?

Originally Posted by JKDS

edited it cuz its $.95 not $95.

So 16% < 38% so we are getting insufficient odds to call! What this means is this: should we call this bet many times over a large sample, we expect to lose money. IE, the times we do hit does not win us enough money to counter all the times we missed and lost the bet we called.

Mind you, in this scenario we are out of position and are unlikely to see a free river. Therefore, we are probably going to have to call a bet on the turn as well. Because of this, we should use the rule of 2 instead, meaning we have only 8% to hit the turn. Also, we are assuming we're beat and that there is no implied value.

Originally Posted by borges

1) We make our decisions street by street in poker. If we're just making a decision on whether to call or not, we should just look at the odds of hitting our card on the next street. So we should be using the rule of 2 (not 4).

2) Minor point: the pot is 92 cents.

3) You can't determine if a move is EV with the procedure you've outlined. I think you are mixing up odds with probabilities. In your example you get the right answer however but mainly because it is so far off from being an EV call.

Originally Posted by JKDS

1 was explained in the example, and a few cents one way or another is usually not going to make a difference. In fact, we can often make reduce the pot and bet a little in order to make the mental math easier without drastically changing the result. For instance, here the pot was .57 and the bet was .35. We can simplify this to .6 and .4 making our L/(G+L) = .4/1 = 40% which is about 38%. If we change these probabilities into odds, im sure you'll find that the result is close to 2.5:1.

Also, for number 3 you can't refute a bunch of math by saying "no you can't". If you are going to make a blanket statement like "you cant determine if the call is EV" you need to explain yourself, because i clearly just showed you could Additionally, as i hinted at above, during this calculation we get a comparison of percentages, ie, 8% < 40%. We can easily change these numbers into actual odds, but there is little point in doing so, as the inequality will still hold true and we still find that the odds are insufficient to justify a call.

Originally Posted by JKDS

PW > 1/( (P/B) + 1)

is exactly the same as p(W) > B/(B+P) DUCY?
My original final solution is equivalent to this, though your variable names are more convenient.

Then all we need to do, is simply determine p(W) by rule of 2 or 4, and know what the bet and the pot is and we can easily see of the call is +ev.