Darren said:
Table is 5/200 spread limit at Garden City. I'm at a full table of 9 and am sitting with $320 in chips. I am in seat 6 at the table and seat 1 is big blind. 2nd seat (loose player) bets out $10, 3rd and 4th folds, then 5th calls. I look down at and call as well. Both seat 7 and 8 fold. Seat 9 (SB) and big blind call. So now there are 5 people in the hand...
Flop comes:
SB checks. BB bets out $20 bringing the pot up to $70. Seat 2 (initial raiser) raises to $100 total. The pot is now at $150. 5th seat folds and now the action is on me.
What would you have done? What do you think of my decision? Am I crazy?
Hey Darren,
I was going to email you this, but I figured why not post here?
I think you made the right play. Don't be too worried about immediate results, think about equities instead and if you made the best statistical move for the situation, ie the one that will bring you the most money long-term.
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There are three options here:
1. Call
2. Raise
3. Fold
A lot of the times, calling is the worst choice. Let's consider it first for this reason: Calling here has to be wrong because there's only 16% chance to hit our nuts on the next card. So we are paying 100 to win 150 with 16%. Don't even need to crunch math, because it just can't be right.
So the real decision is between two options: do we fold or do we raise all in?
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Let's assume this hand was HU or something where raising could sometimes be an option. It probably isn't ever given this action / multiway / minraised pot. (Thanks, Tony!)
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$profit = $pot(%win) - $bet(%lose)
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1. Assuming he has exactly KxKs
$profit = 150(44%) - 320(56%)
$profit = 66 - 179.2 = -113.2
Our expected loss is ~$113 every time we go all in here, even though the hand values are close to "flipping," simply because we are risking $320 to pick up a $150 pot.
2. The kicker: You can't put him on one exact hand
Here is the most compelling reason to fold. Unless he flips his cards face up, we have to assign a range of cards to a villain rather than just one hand. Sets, 2p, TPTK (which you do have 1 over to which helps some), and sometimes crap, might all be in his range. Mess with pokerstove / stox poker, but this is what I would assign as equities here, depending on reads:
$profit = 150(35%) - 320(65%)
$profit = 52.5 - 208 = -155.5
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This post was originally super long and contained a lot of SPR and bet sizing theory, but I'll save that for another day or maybe a hand that's more than just two streets of action.