Greg Raymer Talks Pot Odds

Yes. I'll say it again mid-way into a tourney POT ODDS ARE ALL BUT IRRELEVANT. Those extra chips WILL NOT double or triple your win rate here. But BUSTING WILL TAKE IT TO 0%. And too the dude who said he just cant fold AQ when he isnt on a huge stack...well plz join UB in fact ill thrown you my referall bonus just to get more dead money in these tourneys..if you cant lay AQ in a tourney then your just not gonna make many final tables imho.

And that statement about pot odds is simply dead wrong. 180 degrees wrong. As absolute a wrong as there can be.

Pot odds, including implied odds, are everything. However, there is a lot of data that has to be considered in determining the true odds of a situation. And when I say pot odds I don't simply mean chip odds, but money odds. As we know, there are times when your expectation in terms of chips doesn't correlate linearly with your expectation in terms of money, and money is all that really matters (at least to me). However, when you're not in or near the money, these two things are linear, and once you gather all the data you can, your decision comes down to the math (calculated using that data).

Players who have a great ability to read players can afford to make a few math errors, because they gather such great data. But that doesn't mean that they wouldn't be better if they did the math perfectly. Similarly, your strategy of risk avoidance may leave you as a winning player, but it doesn't mean you wouldn't be better if you made some of these risky decisions more correctly than you do now.

Later, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)