Over estimating implied odds

Poker Strategy / Marcus Bateman / 15 November 2010 / Leave a Comment

Implied odds are one of the most mirage like concepts in poker, and as such, will often lead you the wrong way.

One of the biggest mistakes made by weak pot limit and no limit players is to over estimate just how much money they can win later on by calling with a weak hand, hoping to hit a big flop and win a big pot cracking a big hand. Although implied odds are an important concept in big bet games, they can very easily be over used, and if they are, can quickly become a huge leak in your game.

The bottom line of this is very simple - good players have very poor implied odds when you come up against them. Just like in all forms of poker, good players win more with their strong hands, and lose less with their weak hands, than bad players do. This means that regularly in pots where they hold even quite big pre flop hands, that they will be able to get away with losing relatively small amounts, making your loose pre flop call actually a huge mistake, as you lose money every time you miss, and barely win anything even when you do hit.

This problem can become even more pronounced if you are quite bad at getting away from big hands yourself, as not only are they not paying you off much when you hit, but when the shoe is on the other foot you are losing much more - a dual effect that has huge consequences over the long run.

It is easy enough to look at someone's stack and reason that they only have x number of big blinds and thus set mining etc is not worth doing against them, but much harder to work out just how good a player is when it comes to getting away from big hands. Implied odds are one of the most mirage like concepts in poker, and as such, will often lead you the wrong way. Although many weak players have them in abundance, many strong players are masters of not giving anything away when behind, and this can make any kind of single approach to such a concept a recipe for disaster if not analysed carefully and well in each situation.

Poker is full of illusions that can lead you into calling too much. The illusion you may hit a big flop, the illusion that you may win a big pot, the illusion that every time a player has a big hand and will probably go broke with it. Often, many of these concepts are not true, and being able to avoid the situations where they are not the case, but still be able to spot the situations where they are, is one of the most important steps to taking your no limit or pot limit game up a level.

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