Poker Articles

A Bit of Maths: Bad Call in a Comp
By Paul Samuel
(The UK's answer to Mike Caro or Lassie)

1. Introduction

It was Sunday 15th Sep 2002 at about 12.30 pm UK time and I was playing in a $10 no limit one table comp on Paradise Poker.

Well 'LfromHell' and 'Bonzai', I promised you I would write this up!!!

As I remember it, I was under the gun with a 46 offsuit with the blinds at 10/15. You start with 1000TC and I made it about 60 to go. A player in mid-position made it 150 and I flat called.

The flop came down 44x and I check raised him all-in, winning the showdown. Cracking his Aces!

I was royally criticised by all, and while I petulantly defended my horrible play, let's see if a bit of mathematics can prove me right!

Bad Call

Consider what is really going on:

1. This is a tournament (and a baby one) and I intend to win it!

2. My ill-timed steal has got me in a bother and I don't particularly want to advertise the fact by laying down like a domino.

3. I am looking for the chance to double through with a freak flop - as I did!

4. 150TC still gives me plenty of play

5. 2000TC gives me even more.

Table 1- Target flops

The bottom line is I was a 22:1 to hit my flop. That's the flop I was aiming at. In any of these cases I am putting him on an overpair and I will check raise him for all his chips. This is my major 'hope' and at 22:1 its just that.

Now when my opponent makes it 150 to go I have to invest a further 90TC. Since the 'implied' pot I am aiming at actually includes all his chips, the implied pot-odds I am achieving for the call is Actual.

Not enough, mathematically, but still tempting when you consider all 5 points above!

Let's look at the implied pot odds for different bets he could have made :-

Table 2 - Table of Implied Pot Odds

	Actual	Min									Max
His Bet	120	150	250	300	400	500	600	700	800	900	1000
Implied Pot Odds	12.06 :1	18.08 :1	5.71 :1	4.52 :1	3.19 :1	2.47 :1	2.01 :1	1.70 :1	1.47 :1	1.29 :1	1.15 :1

You see how even for a raise to 300 the pot odds are 4.52:1 - very unattractive!

All-in and of course the odds are approaching evens!

You can see where I am going here. The raise he made is a trap raise and encourages me to 'gamble'. I did and I won.

I feel he should have bet at least 300 or even gone all-in. Why give me the benefit of 3 free cards at a relatively cheap price.

Conundrum

A few years ago in a festival, a living legend from Luton NT won 5 one hand satellites in sequence with a buy-in of 5500 Gilders! He was banned from playing any more but my question is, given that each satellite had 9 players, what were the odds of this achievement?