But the only way to experience the thrill of uncontrollable flop sweat is to play with stuff that folds.
Another way to look at it - let’s say someone is in the hand with a flush draw. There are 9 cards in the deck they can beat you with. Now you’ve got someone else in the pot who’s drawing to an inside straight. If the pot is small enough, he’s drawing incorrectly - in the long run he’ll lose money. So normally you’d profit from his calls. But to the flush draw, nothing changes in terms of his odds - he’s still got 9 cards out of 47 to beat both of you. But now your ‘outs’ to win the hand drop from 38 to 34. For a certain range of pot sizes, your profit drops with the additional caller, even though he’s not getting odds to call. All his profit, plus some of yours, goes to the guy with the flush draw.
This is why you want small pots - if the mistake the gutshot player is making is big enough, it won’t hurt you. And with a small pot, more people will choose not to call. With these vulnerable made hands, you really want to win the pot as quickly as you can. And that’s why you want to be the guy with the big draw in a loose game, not the guy trying to hang on with his one pair.
Of course, poker stories about the long run are boring. Much more compelling are stories about either winning a ridiculous longshot or losing to someone who hit a ridiculous longshot.
Because nobody knows your reputation if you’re new at the table. When you bet pre-flop 4 to 8 times the big blind, and the table is used to tightness, they envision you have a pocket pair and fold to you. If you get called, there’s a decent chance of pairing up on the board and winning a larger pot. Otherwise, throw it away and you’ve only lost a modest amount.
But wait a minute…I drew up a rough hand on CardPlayer and what I came out with is: with a board of Js9h4h AhKh is 47%, KcJd is 41% and 8c7s is 11%. But aren’t you still getting good odds on the money you put in? How is contributing only 1/3 of the subsequent money not profitable for someone with 41% equity? 
Removing 87 from the equation turns it in KJ’s favor heads-up (53/47), but you are only heads up and are more or less a coin flip to AhKh. Or do we have to start looking at bet size vs. existing pot size at this point (not from a pot odds, but from a standpoint that you lose equity on subsequent bets, but gain equity in the existing pot).
I do not believe this is true. Feel free to correct me, but I believe there can be many situations where it is profitable for him to call AND profitable for you to have him in the hand at the same time.
You hold AA, Donkey holds 53o. Flop comes A29. You’re distracted by the tits of the girl across the table and only bet $10 into a $200 pot. 
Donkey has a 8.5% chance (4/47) to hit his gut shot on the next card so getting 20-to-1 is a good call.
But this does not change the fact that you’re still a HUGE favorite here (86%) and are earning money on ANY amount of money that goes into the pot. Charging only $10 to see the next card was a strategic blunder but nevertheless still profitable for you. Your profit profit in poker comes not from getting others to fold, but from getting other’s to call when they’re behind in the hand.
Again, feel free to set me straight here…
Limit and NL are very different games and it’s all due the betting. The biggest difference is in pot odds. Because the raises are limited and capped in limit, your opponent can make a call more easily because he’s getting the right odds. The longer more people stay in the hand, the more likely they are to be able to suck out on you unless you’re holding the stone-cold nuts. (That can also work in your favor at a loose limit table if you do indeed have the nuts.) A good player (or at least one who understands what he’s doing) will not call when he’s not getting the proper odds. So if you’re protecting, say, AA against a flush or straight draw, in NL you can make a big raise, say half-pot or pot-size. Most of the time that’ll push people out and if you do get a really loose caller on a draw, in the long run you will get paid off. (You’ll get paid off in the long run in limit, too, but you can make them pay more for it in NL.)
We’re talking about pots that have more than two players. When there’s a third player in the hand, everything can change.
Let’s take this thought experiment: Let’s say a pot is $1000, and you’ve got the best hand with one card to come. But 8 other people are in the hand with different draws, such that there are only 10 cards that can come out that you will win with. If there are 46 unseen cards, your ‘pot equity’ is about $217. That is, if you played this same hand out 1000 times, your profit would converge on $217. So now the guy next to you bets $200 (for simplification, let’s say that your pot equity includes this bet, and there will be no bets on the river). Should you call? Sure. You’ll make $17 profit in the long run by callling this bet.
Now imagine there’s one more player in the hand, who’s got an inside straight draw that happens to include four of your ten cards. Should HE call? No way. If he calls, he’s going to pay $200 for a one in eleven chance of winning $1000. So his call will cost him, ini the long run, about $110.
So his call is incorrect, and someone is going to make money from his call. Is it going to be you, with the best hand? Nope. In fact, not only is his call not going to benefit you, it’s going to COST you. Because now you only have 6 outs, and your pot equity has dropped from $217 to $130. His call, even though incorrect, costs you $87.
So where does the money go? It goes to the players with the draws who are not affected by his call. If someone is in there with a flush draw, his 9 outs don’t change if the gutshot calls. He profits directly from the error.
Now, if the pot is small enough, and the change in the number of ‘outs’ is small enough, you can still benefit from his error. But there is a range of pot sizes in which he’s not getting the odds to call, but if he does his call will hurt the person with the best, but unimprovable hand, and help the person on a draw which can beat both of you even if the weak caller hits his hand.
In Sklansky’s “Theory of Poker”, he describes exactly this kind of situation. He says that there are situations in which the best hand should fold on the flop - specifically, in situations where the pot is small, the flop is such that there are potentially many draws against you (say, you have QJo, and the flop is Js7s8c), you have a hand that you’re certain is the best but is very weak, and there’s an early bet that you would have to call and face the possibility of raises. He doesn’t explain why in the book, but this is the reason. You can have the best hand and lose money by calling.
The moral is that unsuited, unconnected cards go down in value in loose games, and suited connectors go up in value. Unsuited, unconnected cards also require far more skill to play, because you need to be able to recognize these types of situations and know how to deal with them. For example, if you’re in the blind with KT, and the flop is 7s8sTc, a check-raise may allow you to trap most of the field against a late-position better, forcing everyone else to call two bets. This pushes people out of the pot (the best result), or forces them to pay twice as much for their draws (the second best result). Or, you’re in late position, and it’s checked around to the player on your right, who bets. If you think he might be betting a weaker hand (a draw or a smaller made hand), you should raise and try to force the field out and get heads-up with him. Then depending on what you think he has, if he checks to you on the turn you can either check and take a free card, or you can bet and make him pay for his draw or possibly get a better hand to fold, or to set up a check on the river so you can check as well and see the showdown for free.
I just realized I didn’t answer the specific question:
Sure. Let’s run the hand 100 times against someone who’s got an 8.5% chance of winning if he calls $10:
Case 1: he doesn’t call. In 100 hands, you win $20,000, or $200 per hand (duh)
Case 2: He calls a $10 bet. You win $210 85 times. or $17,850. That’s a loss of $21.50 per hand.
When heads-up with someone, you always win what he loses, or lose what he wins. Heads-up, if someone has the odds to call you, you never want him calling. That’s why, in no-limit poker, you typically want to size your bet such that he’s not getting odds to call, but not so big that he’ll fold (assuming the variance doesn’t matter to you). So heads-up, you’re always trying to price your opponent out of the pot, but only by enough that he might be encouraged to mistakenly call.
However, I would argue that unless you have an unlimited bankroll, you don’t want to do this unless the pot is very small, or you can induce him to make a very big error. This is a side issue having to do with the Kelly Criterion and bankroll sizing (more familiar to blackjack players, but it applies here). But basically, if you have a $10,000 bankroll, and you’re risking a $1000 pot, you should only do so if you can induce your opponent to make an error greater than $100. So bet accordingly.
Oh wow, that was a great explanation. Thanks. You get lessons by any chance?
Thanks. The SDMB’s pretty much the only place where I talk about poker these days.