Is there such a thing as "Range Odds"?

I'm going off the rails on a crazy train here. Try to hang with me. Think of Range Odds as being a more specific version of Pot Odds. They are effectively "Range" Pot Odds.

Think of a situation where you're faced with making a big call against an opponent you have reads on. Say you have AK offsuit on an AQQ37 rainbow board. You acted passive on the flop because of the queens. You tried to control the pot size for whatever reason in case the opponent had the queen. Now say in first position on the river your opponent leads into you with a 35xBB bet into a 40xBB pot. Now your call would be about 2:1. You have to decide how often you're ahead against this opponent in this spot. Are you ahead more than 1 out of every 2 times this scenerio plays out with all the information you gathered? You decide the opponent is capable of making a move here with a worse hand. The opponent was also just hit with a bad beat, which may make him tilt. You call, he shows down A7, and you rake the pot.

Can you really coin this simply "Pot Odds"? The same scenerio plays out similar in Limit when you call down a very aggressive player with ace high. We've always considered this simply Pot Odds. Pot Odds are less specific though are they not?

Pot Odds are oblivious to subjective reason.

Do players make mistakes by considering Pot Odds in a spot like this, instead of Range Odds? Discuss.

Putting people on ranges good.

Thats what you do when you devalue outs. SSH talks about examples where you have ATs on an 278 2 suited flop. Someone bets and you have to decide to call. You know if the flush comes you have the nuts so you have 9 flush outs.
You know if a T or an A comes you might have the best hand...but you might not so you have some outs. you have to make a guess as to how many outs these 6 cards are worth. You might decide they are worth 3 outs. So you add your 9 full outs and your estimate of 3 outs to get 12 outs and you decide if it is worth a call based on the pot odds.

It sounds like this is is the sort of situation you are talking about.

Rondavu: This is exactly how I play poker. Is there another way?

Pelion: We are talking about your equity v villains range facing a bet on the river.

Originally Posted by Demiparadigm

Rondavu: This is exactly how I play poker. Is there another way?

As an aside, you and I at the same NL table would be sick.

my answer is yes

42

I know I'm being captain obvious in this post to a lot of you guys who have long since digested this line of thought, but I was trying to devise a way to shine a somewhat layman perspective on one of the most important processes in NL.

I hope I hit the nail on the head somewhat.

Originally Posted by Pelion

Thats what you do when you devalue outs. SSH talks about examples where you have ATs on an 278 2 suited flop. Someone bets and you have to decide to call. You know if the flush comes you have the nuts so you have 9 flush outs.
You know if a T or an A comes you might have the best hand...but you might not so you have some outs. you have to make a guess as to how many outs these 6 cards are worth. You might decide they are worth 3 outs. So you add your 9 full outs and your estimate of 3 outs to get 12 outs and you decide if it is worth a call based on the pot odds.

It sounds like this is is the sort of situation you are talking about.

Pelion, I'm saying on an AQQ37 rainbow, when faced with the big 2:1 river call, you would fold to a more passive opponent with a tight range on principal, have hard decisions in between, and instacall against someone with a crop of hands you're ahead of littering their range. We talk about folding to unknown opponents more often. That is giving the villain the -EV benefit of the doubt. You actually make a lot of mistakes against unknowns and have no control over it. It's just impossible to play against their range efficiently, since it's ??? Counterfeit outs are part of this process of course.

Effectively you have a -EV<---------->+EV spectrum on the 2:1 based on reads and ranges.

I post this with an eye towards emotional influence in Hold-em, and how it can be easily confused with what I'm coining "Range Odds". I think people build large illogical pots based on relationships, which really don't belong in your minds equation. Instead one should feel the ebb and flow of an everchanging range based on the emotions and responses of your opponents independant of your own emotion.

As an example, I consider a reaction to a blind being challenged as an emotion that influences the range of an opponent, and if you're correct about their response to your assault, they are basically paying you $$$ with their emotion through an automatically lowered range.

I was at the end of a rebuy last night, and sitting in the small blind I picked off the buttons steal attempt with a push at 30K/60K blind level. I think I had like Q8 suited or something. Next time I was in the SB I was dealt AK, and when he raised my blind again, I pushed, and he instacalled with A5. He failed to consider the likelihood that my range was stronger the second time around based on our relationship, instead leaning towards "He must think I'm an easy lay so I call with any ace". The advantage I had is I knew where his emotion was at that point in time, and played directly against it. The opponent misjudged his range odds.

I see what you mean. I had a similar situation today where I raised ATs into the naturally aggressive, shortstacked BB and he thought for ages and folded. You could tell he thought it was a steal and really really wanted to fight back.

Next hand im delt QQ and raise to just under half his stack. I expect him to push allin with a very wide range. No way is he going to let me bully him off twice in a row. Sadly I misjudged. He used up the entire timebank and then folded.

I made that descision based on our "relationship". Sadly he either didnt have Ax, or I misjudged the relationship. I guess Ill never know which but it was worth a try.

Funny I read this post now.. I just made a post with a similar point in the beginner's forum..

char will be mad this isn't the maximizing value in MTT post, if he sees it.

I like the second part, but edit out the bad beat. Who cares?

Originally Posted by Pelion

I see what you mean. I had a similar situation today where I raised ATs into the naturally aggressive, shortstacked BB and he thought for ages and folded. You could tell he thought it was a steal and really really wanted to fight back.

Next hand im dealt QQ and raise to just under half his stack. I expect him to push allin with a very wide range. No way is he going to let me bully him off twice in a row. Sadly I misjudged. He used up the entire timebank and then folded.

I made that descision based on our "relationship". Sadly he either didnt have Ax, or I misjudged the relationship. I guess Ill never know which but it was worth a try.

Exactly. When you had QQ your opponent considered range odds compared to your frequent raises. It was rather masterful for you to know he was somewhat ripe for the fight when you caught QQ. I think the mistake you made was making an assumption about his awareness of your own awareness. As in you tipped him off with a bigger raise, and he said to himself "No, he knows I wanted to play with him last hand, and now he's trying to maximize value against that paradigm with a big hand".