blonde poker forum

I've been think a bit recently about the nature of pot odds in tournaments vs. pot odds in cash and it strikes me that utilising pot odds in tournaments is a far from straight forward affair compared to in cash. Let me try and explain my thinking.

Let's say you in a pot for which you know (I say know for the sake of simplicity) that you are 1.75:1 to win the hand and you are facing a pot size all in bet. In a cash game your thinking is very easy: you are being offered 2:1 odds on a hand that you are 1.75:1 to win, therefore making that call everytime will be profitable in the long run so you should call.

The difference about this situation in a tournment is that your payout if  is payd to you in chips rather than cash. So you've got to ask yourself "does winning this hand increase my expected return from this tournament sufficiently to warrent the call?". An obvious example is on the bubble in a tournament. Let's say your shortstacked on the bubble and the situation above arises. Even though you've got more than odds to call, you may well reason that calling here is negetive ev (in terms of cash rather than tournament chips) given that if you wait a few more hands then you're guaranteed a cash finish. Faced with the same situation just after the bubble's burst you'd call in a flash because you've nothing to lose and you need to get your chips in soon if you want any chance of going deeper. And of course your thinking will be different at any given stage of a tournament.

It's like that question that if you were the big blind in the first hand of the world series and there were 5 all in's ahead of you and you had AA, what would you do? If it was cash you should call every time because it's posivitive EV, but if you were a good enough poker player with a big natural edge, you may reason that in the tournament situation you should fold because risking it all there and then has less EV (again in terms of cash rather than chips) than playing on.

What do people think about this? Do you factor things like this into your thinking in tournaments or do you just play the odds like you would in cash? It seems to me that it's almost impossible to accurately calculate EV (in terms of cash) in tournaments as there are far to many varialbles such as the payout structure, what stage you're at in the tournament, how good you are, how good your opponents are, whether there are any other short stacks likely to bust soon (on the bubble) etc.

I play for the money in tournaments. I am also not a pot odds player..I tend to play the person rather then the cards.
If I feel I will get into the money if I let the hand go I will let the hand go...it's all about the money at the end of the day.
Once you have a fair amount of prizemoney (IOW you made a fair return opn your investment) I start playing for first prize...and that ussually means pot odds become more important

Pot odds are not particularly the best tool in tournaments because you have to consider tournament equity.

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