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Calling for implied odds and then extracting value

Monday November, 16th 2009 by fullhouse

Implied odds in poker are the pot odds adjusted for future rounds of betting. Implied odds are useful because they will help a player decide whether there is a lot of potential value in their hand. If you have a hand that can possibly win a large pot there is a good chance that you should be factoring in your implied odds. For example, if you were told that your opponent was dealt AA pre flop and you were holding 88, it would be obvious that you are way behind. It would make no sense to call a raise from him pre flop because you thought your hand would be the best a decent amount of the time; instead you would call the raise hoping to flop a set. So why call their raise if you have 88, but not if you had a hand like AQ or AK (if you knew they had AA)? 88 is a hand that can very easily stack aces if it hits a set, but AQ/AK can become very transparent and has very few hands it will stack. If your hand has a bit of deception and a decent chance at gaining insurmountable strength, it will probably carry solid implied odds. Below you will find a real hand history demonstrating implied odds and what happens when you hit your hand.

No-Limit Hold'em, $0.50 BB (6-Max)

Button ($30.34)
SB ($21)
BB ($13.30)
UTG ($24.65)
MP ($37.80)
Hero (CO) ($228.69)

Preflop

Hero is CO with 9h, 9s
1 fold, MP bets $1.50, Hero calls $1.50, 3 folds
We are dealt 99 and the MP player opens to 3x BB. We decide to call and see a flop. There is a decent chance that we currently have the best hand, but a raise will usually force out all worse hand and all better hands will either call or re raise.

Flop

($3.75) Js, 10c, 8d (2 players)
MP bets $3.50, Hero calls $3.50
The flop is pretty good for our hand, not the best, but we can definitely work with it. MP continues with a flop bet, something he will usually do whether he hits the flop or not. This is an easy call for a few reasons, either our hand is currently the best or we can hit a 7 or Q to make a straight.

Turn

($10.75) 5c (2 players)
MP bets $7, Hero calls $7
The turn is a blank, but it does not hurt our hand’s strength. If we had the best hand after the flop we should still be ahead after this turn is dealt. He leads for 3/4 of the pot, and we call one more time. If the river misses us and he again bets we will be folding. The reason we call is because our hand might be good, he might check the river regardless, and we can still hit our straight.

River

($24.75) Qs (2 players)
MP bets $13, Hero raises to $63.75, MP calls $12.80 (All-In)
The river is what we were looking for to complete the straight. Now are hand is virtually guaranteed to be the best; we just need to have MP lead out again so that we can shove over him. He complies and we can safely shove, he calls and our hand is good. If he had checked to us a simple bet of $16 would have been sufficient. We called because our hand could have been good on the flop and turn (it wasn’t), but the implied odds allowed us to take down the pot when he hit our card.