Poker Math That Matters

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he can call profitably, if we have the best hand, we should still
bet (See Appendix B).
So far in this section, we've only discussed situations where
we’ve known our opponent's hand. When we don't know our
opponent's hand, we have to consider that he is likely to have
implied odds against us. Let's go back to our previous example.
Hero: A♦A♥
Villain: Unknown
Board: T♣J♣6♠.
Again, our villain is loose and aggressive. The pot is again
$7.50, and we have $96.50 behind. We know he can have draws
like KQ as well as draws like 3♣4♣. If a club comes on a later
street, he is capable of bluffing with his unimproved KQ. If a 9
comes on a later street, he is capable of bluffing with his
unimproved flush draw. Now we're in a situation where we can't
play perfectly on the river, and we're probably going to have to
pay him off sometimes. 14 Because he has implied odds, we'll
want to bet larger in this spot to cut down on his implied odds as
much as possible. We're still wanting him to make a bad call,
but we want to make his strategy -EV through the whole hand.
We can now look at implied odds through the eyes of our villain.
Let's say we bet $8 on this flop. The villain has 16% equity to
the turn. This means he needs six times our turn bet. That's $48.
There is already about $24 in the pot. So, he would need to get
14 Notice how valuable hand-reading is. If our opponent is more
predictable, we can practically play like his hand is face up. Against an
opponent who doesn't bluff, we can proceed very simply in this hand.
We bet the largest amount we think the player will call with typical
draws. Then we can simply fold to his aggression if draws are
completed by future cards. Also, notice the value of being perceived as
an aggressive player.