Bankroll Management

I went over the idea of pot odds in the most recent article, and today it would be a good idea to build on that concept and teach you implied odds. As we talked about last time, bankroll management must be followed at all times because there will be times in which you’ll be forced to call a bet when you’re on a draw. You’re of course going to lose a few of these pots, and at times it’s tough to get away from these them even if you’re employing a correct poker hands order. When you consider implied odds, you’ll see a theme that’s similar in the fact that we’re also putting our money in with a worse hand. The reason is different, though: we call bets with implied odds because we are hoping to win bets on later streets when we hit.

Let’s go back to the example from the last entry where we were playing a tournament on a Full Tilt Poker download and were in a heads-up pot with a flush draw. However, in this example say that our opponent doesn’t push and raises 600 more chips instead. We saw in the last entry that we can only call raises that are less than 500 chips to have the pot odds to call, so this appears to be a bad deal for us. However, everything changes depending on how many chips are remaining in his stack if we know that there is no way he’s folding on later streets. In this example, let’s say he has 1,000 chips behind. To keep it simple, we will also assume that he will check back the turn 100% of the time. This information means that you can use implied odds to determine whether or not it’s correct to call. There are 1,000 chips in the pot and he has 1,000 chips behind. Since we expect those chips to be in the pot by the river, you can consider that the pot has 2,000 chips rather than just 1,000. You need to call 600 chips to win 2,000 in the pot and 600 / 2,000 = 30%. Since you are around 33% to hit your flush by the river, this call has positive expectation when implied odds are considered.

So far you’ve seen that with a poker odds chart you can figure out pot odds and implied odds, and together they will provide an important advantage over others. Someone new to the game could potentially lose money in a couple different ways with a draw after the flop. The first way is he could call a bet without correct pot odds, and we’ve seen that this yields a negative expectation. Or maybe he’ll have a draw and his opponent will be giving him great implied odds to call, but he won’t do so because he sees that the pot odds aren’t there. Whether you’re playing ring games or MTT poker, it’s important that you take advantage of both pot odds and implied odds to maximize your expectation in all drawing situations.

I’ll finish with a word of caution. Occasionally players will think that it’s okay to call in all situations when they are taught implied odds because they assume that the odds are always there. When you’re counting future bets, you must be absolutely sure that you are actually going to get them. Let’s say you’re getting dealt poker hands in a ring game and you turn a set, but it seems that it wasn’t the best card because it also gave your opponent a flush. He raises and you need to decide whether or not you have the implied odds to try to hit your boat on the river. For this calculation, you must decide whether or not he’s likely to pay you off on a paired river. He might not do so because he might realize that you hit a boat! Your implied odds are going to be inaccurate if he actually won’t pay you off when you hit, and then your call will become unprofitable.