December 6, 2005
Although they're making the wrong play, it can sew seeds of confusion in your own mind. You'll ask yourself; "Just what could they be holding?" This is another reason why it is so critically important to know your opponents. Once you get a fix on their play, you'll be able to tell who is likely to be out of line when they raise or reraise, and which Pokerroom players usually have the hand they represent when they take similar action.
Since this bet has a positive expectation, it is worth money each time you make it regardless of whether you win that particular time. Since that's the case, go ahead and raise. You might as well make as much as you can when you're lucky enough to hit your hand. You've got a pair of queens. You're in fifth position and no one has called the blinds.
Lance Armstrong and Poker
The odds are fixed, immutable, stacked in favor of the house, and no betting system can spin straw into gold. Even if a casino is offering a million times odds at craps, it will only approach an even money bet; it will never swing the odds in favor of the Pokerroom player. And whenever a casino takes slightly shorter odds rest assured they will make it up in volume.
Next I simulated those hands and added the flop to the mix. With a 10-8-3 flop, Ice won slightly more than 95 percent of the one million simulated hands. That made him a pretty big favorite, though not as big as many people suspected when everyone who witnessed, or heard about it was discussing the hand. Our guest speaker at that evening's award banquet was the very funny, witty, irreverent, and right on point, John Vorhaus.
Any one of those eight will do; it doesn't matter which one pops out of the deck. Now suppose you tell yourself that you will come out bluffing if your last card is a red deuce instead of the hoped-for seven or queen. By giving yourself two bluffing Pokerroom cards as well as eight winning cards, in the 4-to-1 ratio of winning cards to your opponent's pot odds you've optimized your decision-making.
Sheryl Crow and Poker
If the game is short-handed, or you're in a Pokerroom tournament, or playing big-bet poker -- half-pot, pot-limit, or no-limit -- there are a raft of other factors that should be considered too. That's why the answer to so many questions is "it depends." The choice of tactic can vary dramatically from one player to another, even as the overall strategic objectives remain unchanged.
That's not critical if you are a recreational player and supplement your playing bankroll with money earned elsewhere, but the working professional poker player ought to take heed. You have to play in a game where your bankroll can withstand the expected fluctuations, or you can expect to be on the rail sometime in the future.
Let's assume that the pot now contains $130. Although the size of the pot has increased arithmetically, the chances against your bluff succeeding have grown geometrically. In fact, your chances of a bluff that will succeed one-third of the time against each opponent have decreased to one-ninth of the time when you consider both opponents together. There's no magic here. We're simply multiplying fractions.
