OK, my head hurts. Somebody want to write up a primer on what odds we ought to know? (I don’t know if my request justifies a new thread or not.)
BTW. GO, my “concur” was for the statement that the original 9K raise was poor. Although, as I think about it, it wasn’t really poor so much as possibly questionable. First in in middle position, raising with A4 suited is aggressive, but not totally sucky.
What my “conur” didn’t cover was the subject of implied odds. They don’t apply to my last post, which was talking about villain’s pot odds to call with a draw when Capa was all in. There’s no more out there for villain to win – his opp’s all-in on the flop – so there are no implied odds.
(Does that help, OO, or does it make it worse?)
I just discovered a major flaw in my above calculations. Capa was the big blind, so in order to call villain’s raise he only had to put in 6K – then he raised 27K additional. This means that there’s the starting pot of 8500, plus villain’s 9000, Capa’s call of 6K and raise of 27K – for a total pot back to villain of 50,500, into which he needs to put 27,000 to call. So those pot odds are only 1.87:1, meaning villain needs at least a 34.4 winning percent to make the call an even money proposition. His call’s pretty fricking questionable if he’s assuming he’s got a 35% WP.
(OO, in case you still want a primer, I recommend Harrington on Holdem.)
I will admit that I may not understand pot odds completley. But if he calls the $27,000 the pot odds only tell what he can expect to win given what is already in the pot. So the good scenarios reuturn whatever is in the pot and the bad scenarios represent a los of $27,000. However, many of the good scenarios would probably represent winning more, much more, than what is currently in the pot, so that adds value. There are some bad scenarios that can have him losing lots of money, but a majority of the bad flops will allow him to get out of the hand and put a cap on his losses at $27,000. So given your analysis as it being a marginal call I think goes up in value when the assymmetry is accounted fo.
Ah, I get you. Sorry – I misunderstood which of my (ridiculously numerous) posts you were referring to when you brought up the subject of implied odds. 
No, I get this. What I don’t know is: If I have XY, I can be no worse than Z:1 to win, so I should call/raise, or not. What are the Xs, Ys and Zs? (Does this make any sense? Phil Helmuth, Phil Gordon, etc. on TV spit this stuff out like a tree chipper.)
It all depends. You’re always having to guess at what your opponent might have or be drawing to, which is why Harrington lays out structured hand analysis, which is what I did up there – you decide what your opponent’s most likely hands are based on his betting pattern, assign rough percentages for each significant hand type, multiply the percentage by the odds that your hand will win at showdown, convert that percentage to winning odds and compare that to the odds the pot is offering you. Obviously, that’s cumbersome for doing at the table, but with a lot of practice at it I think you can get faster because you’ll start being able to guesstimate pretty well.
Preflop odds for some standard confrontations (this is heads-up, you understand) include:
higher pair vs. lower pair - higher pair is about 4.5:1 to win
pair vs. two lower cards - pair is about 55:45
pair vs. two lower cards - pair is about 5:1, but if the lower cards are close together the odds are closer to 4.5:1
pair vs. a higher card and a lower card - pair is 5:2
two higher cards vs. two lower cards - higher cards are about 5:3
Also useful to know is that the odds against flopping a set when you hold a pocket pair are 7.5:1 against. And that when the flop comes below your AK, your odds of beating that lower pair drop to about 3:1 against.
After the flop, things get trickier. It’s helpful to remember that when somebody’s four to a flush with two cards to come, it’s about 2:1 against him completing the flush. An open-ended straight draw is slightly worse, about 2.2:1 against.
There’s also a quick and dirty formula for calculating winning percentage based on number of outs – for every out you have, assign a 2% winning chance, then multiply the result by the number of cards to come. This formula tends to err a bit on the high side, so the more outs you have the more you have to adjust the result downwards.
Does that help?
Yep. I knew about counting outs and figuring odds on straight and flush draws, but I didn’t know the other stuff. And I figure that
should be
Right?
And a clarification:
A while back I posted about (possibly) incorrectly folding a straight draw. When a second ace hit on the turn, and there was a big bet and a call, I (correctly) put my opponents on AAA each. I should have called because the implied odds were huge because all the money was going in at the river, baby.
Quite right – good catch. Sorry about that.
It’s debatable, since you can’t be sure you’re not up against a made boat, or that your straight card (if it comes) won’t make somebody a boat. I’d be pretty hesitant to draw at a straight with a pair on board.