Implications

Attended the guru's advanced poker class last night at the community college. It was an excellent meeting, with a ton of good questions asked by the students and (as always) entertaining answers from the guru. Mostly he went over his (our) ten commandments of poker and then talked a fair bit about reading board texture, bluffing, and the like.

Toward the end of class, he fired up FullTilt and played 50 hands of $.5/1 limit. We focused on playing position poker and putting the opp on hands. We were up a few bucks for most of the game, but then took a big hit on one hand and ended up stuck for $3 or so. Which brings me to the point of this post: I don't understand implied odds. And neither does the guru, me thinks. In fact, a lot of people don't get it at all and/or are totally confused as to how the concept of "getting paid off big later" works. Let me explain:

We were in middle position and woke up to TT. A new, unknown player UTG raised. The UTG+1 player (who has shown down some strong hands, and is obviously playing position poker) re-raised. Everyone in the class put the UTG+1 player on (obviously) AA, KK, QQ, JJ, or AK. It folded around to us. I assumed the guru was going to fold, but he called instead. Wtf? UTG checked, and then we end up folding on the raggy flop when the UTG+1 guy raised again. UTG folded and the aggressor took down the pot.

Afterward I questioned the play. The response from the guru (and some of the students) was that the "implied odds" of hitting a set and getting paid off big was justification for making the call. Hmmm... I don't see how we were getting anywhere close to the right odds to make that preflop raise. If we did, indeed, think we were dominated preflop (all but the AK scenario had us dogs at 4:1 or so), and the chances of hitting our set was roughly 8:1, and we were getting only 3:1 to make the call (assuming the blinds folded, which they did), how in the hell do you make that call? Again, the answer came: "implied odds." Half the class thought it was a good call, the other half thought it was crazy. Count me in the latter camp. I mean, if we know we're beat and we're shooting for a set, wouldn't you also play 99, 88, etc.. Hell, play 22 into someone you're certain has AA in the 8:1 chance you hit the set, right? Wrong. I think.

The guru and I argued for a while about the hand via phone on our respective drives home. I even posted the scenario on one of the poker forums to see what the internet experts thought. The bottom line is that a few people feel it's okay to call, some felt a re-raise was in order, and most folks feel it was a terrible play, and that we needed to get 20:1 or better pot odds preflop to make that call. Unfortunately, no one can explain to me where the 20:1 number comes from either. In fact, there seems to be general confusion as to how implied odds factor in and, in fact, whether they even matter in what was ultimately going to turn in to a heads up match with the UTG+1 anyway. One normally cogent and reasonable guy even went so far as to say implied odds don't make sense in limit games at all. Huh?

Guess I need to do some studying in this area before I can say definitively whether calling with the TT was the right or wrong thing to do.... But in the meantime, I'm going to stick with my original assessment: it was a bad call.

Okay, that's the bad news. The good news is what happened when I got home after class. Of course I logged in and played 30 hands of low stakes limit. The first game I jumped in to was a 9-handed game, and within 2 laps I couldn't spot the sucker and I was down a few bucks. Okay, I jumped out of that game and got into a 6-handed game. Within ten hands, three of the players VPIPs were greater than 75%. Now this was more like it! Even better, I picked up KK in late position and capped a reraise preflop. The flop comes K-K-A and we cap again three way on the turn and the river. Needless to say I made a REALLY nice score on that one hand, logged out, and went to bed feeling fat, dumb, and happy. Can't ask for more than that... except of course to understand implied odds.

All-in for now...
-Bug