I’m nearly recovered from Mardi Gras and my hang over is almost gone.

Last post I talked about Implied Pot Odds and a few articles ago I talked about Pot Odds. Today I’m going to talk about the last part of the formula for winning poker over the long haul, Reverse Implied Odds.

This concept is often one of the easily confusing subjects. Not only do I have a hard time understanding it entirely myself, but I’m finding I’m having a hard time even explaining the concept. Basically, Reverse Implied Odds apply to situations where the player will win the minimum amount if they have the best hand, but lose the maximum if they don’t. Making a hand that looks profitable into a loser.

Let’s say, in the big blind, you have:

Two players limp, the small blind calls and you check, making the pot $40. The flop comes:

The small blind bets $10. You have top pair and 5 to 1 pot odds. You only need to win 17% of the time to make this call profitable. But let’s think about future betting rounds. Once we take those into account, this call becomes an unprofitable one.

If you truly have the best hand, you’re unlikely to get a lot of action from weaker hands. Also, there’s a lot of draws that could be possible, a straight or a flush, giving someone a lot of outs to outdraw you. Finally, you could already be beat by an over pair or a 9 with a better kicker. Calling here means that you’ll be paying off again on the turn and river, very likely.

Also, your hand has little chance of improving and it’s a relatively small pot. Finally, after you start adding those later rounds of betting in and you quickly see that your true pot odds are much worse than 5 to 1, giving you a negative expectation in the long haul… remember, the long haul is what it’s all about.

So what’s the correct play with the above situation? You should fold.

When the pot is small, if there is a high chance that you are already beaten or can easily be outdrawn, you should fold marginal made hands.

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