I'm feeling lazy so I'm just gonna insert my comments as
bolded red text into a quote of your guide
Hello all,
So here is going to be my first strategy guide for implied odds.
For people wondering what it is, it is quiet simple.
Implied odds means the amount you expect to win if you hit, vs the cost you have to pay to have the chance to win that amount.
I believe this is one of the more important things in poker, so how do we apply this in a sit and go?
I'll start with explaining a few important things.
It is important to understand that this applies only if you have a certain amount of chips before you enter the pot, or before you call for a certain draw.
I'm not going to say that 1000 or 100000 chips is enough, because it all depends on the blinds you're playing on.
So instead of saying '' a certain amount of chips'' ill say from now on the amount of BB's you have left behind.
Example: you have 2700 chip, blinds are 25-50, this means you have 54 Big blinds.
Why is this so important? well if you have only 800 chips you have no big implied odds.
Let me explain: I defined implied odds as the amount you expect to win if you hit.. if you have only 800 chips.
And lets say your in a 3 way pot, the amount you can win at most is 2400, while if you had 1600 chips it would have been 4800 ( + ante's and blinds) so the smaller your stack, the less implied odds will apply - you're expected amount of chips get less when your stack gets smaller.
It is fundemental to understand this!
While you can win much more if you (and your opponents) have more big blinds, with 800 chips at 25/50 (or 16 big blinds), a limp which could potentially lead to a 24xBB profit (24:1 odds - you'd only need to hit 4.1666% of the time in order to "break even", although more on that below), which is more than enough to make a call.
Of course, unless you are playing against reckless opponents, it is very unlikely you will get to double up off of one opponent, nevermind two, if you have any sort of significant chip stack. This is something that you will have to consider when estimating your implied odds.
So about what hands are we talking if we are talking about ''implied odds''.
Preflop we are talking about hands like Small pairs, Suited connectors, or perhaps even hands like 5-7s and 9-js ( i rather advice you to fold these).
Let's apply this on small pair in 2 situations:
First situations: Your chip stack is 1570, we are in beginning stage of STT. Blinds are 15-30.
We have 2 limpers before us, we are dealt 44 on button positions, what are we going to do?
We expect that we are going with 4-5 players to the flop, so we expect when we hit our 3th 4 that we get ''some'' chips, the amount you expect is important whether it is + EV or - EV to call.
This situation is quiet simple because we're in the beginning stage, blinds are low we have good implied odds,
If we hit our 4, there is a big chance that one of the other players hit something as well.
To do this mathematical, we have a chance of 1/8 to hit that 3th 4 ( 2 outs 3 cards means about 12% chance)
So our cost 30 chips, and we hit our 4 ones in the 8 time, so what do we want at leas to win?
We want at least to make it break even, which means we want to earn 1 in the 8 times, 240.
So if we want to make this +EV we need at least 240 chips, in this situation that is really easy to reach, since we are already with 4 other limpers so there is already 150 chips in the pot, we only need 90 more to make this + ev which almost happens always.
But then you might ask yourself.... There are more ways to hit our 4, straights, flushes etc....
In my opinion we can skip those chances because if we hit that set we have some chances to still lose it, so that's why i always skip those chances of losing and winning in other ways.
Now we have the same situation but then with blinds 100-200, except same situation,
2 limpers before us, but now we have to call 200 and we have only about 1200 chips,
this time we need to earn at least 8x200 to make this + ev if we hit which is alot more,
We can say that the cost is alot higher ( 200 is a significant part of your chipstack almost 20% with a chance of 12% to hit that pair) since we have only 1200 chips behind our expected amount we win is way smaller then when we had 1600 so calling this is - EV because we have to win at least 1600 chips in the long run and we have only 1200 behind, so the maximum amount we can win is smaller. If you had more chips like 6000, calling might + ev BUT that depends on your opponent chipstack sizes. why? because the maximum we can win is the amount they have left behind, when that is small our implied odds are low - of course this doesn't count heads up because then we might have flip, in this situation we are talking about more players on the flop.
With a chip stack as low as 6 big blinds, we shouldn't be looking for implied odds - we need to steal or double up with every chance we can get. This means no limping, simply playing raise or fold until our stack gets a bit bigger. You would want to raise with hands that are unlikely to be dominated - so your mid suited connectors, low pairs, and obviously monster hands are what you would do this with. In this situation we are ignoring implied odds, we just want to either take down the blinds - which alone would mean increasing our stack by 25% - or gambling for a double up. It's never a situation you like to be in, but with such a small stack it is really your only option.
I hope that you understand now that if blinds get higher we have a higher cost and we need a higher expected amount of winnings to make it + EV.
We can apply this on more hands: 4- flush draw we have about 1/3( 1/6th on one card) chance to hit so to make it EV you have to win at least 3 times the amount you have to pay on the turn/river, Evaluate your implied odds on the flop and again on the turn. - same thing applies to a open ended straight draw.
So a summary of this:
- The higher the blinds the less implied odds
- Smaller stack means less implied odds
- More players means more expected winnings means better implied odds
- Other ways of winning the hand we skip against the ways we lose the hands we do hit.
Other things that are important:
- Position: do not call early, because the chance that someone raises is big, if you call the raise you need alot better implied odds.
This depends entirely on the table conditions. I've played very profitably limping with all sorts of hands UTG because the rest of the table would either limp or fold preflop. This let me see very cheap flops with mediocre holdings - when I hit, I took massive pots from my opponents because of the thinking "surely he's not playing 75 from UTG!" If your opponent's aren't raising preflop, you can pretty much ignore position when determining whether or not you should play a hand.
- Bubble position, you might not wanne play at the bubble because it is costly to lose chips when you don't have alot of chips behind, you might lose alot of money by limping those small pairs ( or other draws)
It's exactly because of this thinking that you want to be VERY aggressive when bubble time comes around. No one wants to be the bubbler, so they'll fold all sorts of hands to avoid being a confrontation that could put their cashing position in jeopardy. Sure, you'll end up busting every now and then when you run in AA or KK, but when you get past the bubble you'll have gained a lot more chips than just folding, and will have put yourself in great condition to take the SnG down.
- The amount you expect to win is different in every situation: you need some skills to estimate the range of your opponents, and how aggressive they are, and base your decision on this.
- Most of the time you face raises with your smaller pairs, use the same method you just need higher expected winnings, if someone raised 3x and we have the same situation like before we need 3x the expected amount winnings to make this + EV ( so 3x 240).
- There are programs that can help you with estimating your opponents hands, ( it will track how loose/tight, aggressive/passive opponents are) Programs like these are handy, you might want to consider buying one.
- This strategy applies more in Cash games, then in tournaments and sit and go's, however you can use it any type of game! i'm considering myself as an avarage-advance Sit And Go player, and use this strategy alot ( especially with low blinds) - so this strategy guide belongs in all sections. - but since i play sng's i posted it here.
Please add some comments, because i know i missed some important things!
P.s Sorry if there are some English mistakes, but i was in a hurry and it is not my native language.
No worries about those. You'd be surprised at the English of some who have it as their primary language! You got your points across well.
Now for my comments on "breaking even", which I talked about to earlier. In any sort of tournament - whether it be a big field MTT or single table SnG, the "break even" concept does not apply when determining your odds. This is because, unlike a cash game, where a double up means you just doubled your money, a double up in a tournament does NOT mean doubling up the cash you will walk out of. This is because in a tournament, while the game does not end until someone holds all the chips, the person who wins does not take home the entire prize pool (unless this is a winner take all tournament - in which case the "breaking even" concept works perfectly well). It is because of this that you will actually need slightly better odds to "break even" in a tournament than the likelihood of your hand hitting. In other words, if you figure to be 33% to win a hand, you will need to be getting better than 2:1 simply to break even (nevermind making money).
