Balancing Risk and Reward In Poker
Balancing is important in playing poker. You must know if a risk your taking is worth the reward. Sometimes odds are surprisingly good but the consequences are not as good. Check out the following examples:
Example 1 – A very affluent man approach you and ask you to play a round of Russian roulette for him. He is offering you $1,000,000 just to play it.
In this situation you have 5 out 6 chances of defeating the game and winning the offered million. The catch would be there is 1 out of 6 chances that you are going to be dead. Good rewards but a great risk. I myself don’t want to end up dead just to get a million dollars.
Example 2 – You won the lottery and you took five million dollars. The same man propose that he’s going to give you $10,000,000, if its head in flip the coin game. If its tails then you’ll give him $5,000,000.
At this example you’re offered very high odds. 50% chance to win $10 million dollars. However, you also had 50% chance of losing $5 million dollars to the same man. I think if the rich man offered a lesser amount of money as bet, you could have tried your luck into this. But an all or nothing situation like this does not attract better individuals.
It has a very limited chance to you’ll encounter the same odds in poker as the two examples above but there will be a time that you will give up a positive expected value bet because of the risk involve.
Here’s one good example:
You’re in WSOP tournament because you one a free roll in a poker site. But in a particular moment you run out of chips and you’re only a player away from the bubble. If you make the money you’ll get a considerable $50,000. Someone told you that another player has been eliminated from the tourney. If you lose the hand, you’re going to run out of money because you are already short stacked.
Your hole card is a pocket of Aces. If you decided to fold you’ll win $50,000. But if you play and lose you’ll get nothing. But if you play and win you got triple winnings.
The thing is that even if you play and win the hand, you still have a little chance to move up on the tournament ladder. And also if you try to play then you’ll also take the risk in losing $50,000.
Your knowledge of EV is not enough to justify risking everything you have in order to gain the reward. Before making any decision think about it twice before finalizing it.
Remember that in a tournament especially if you are deep stacked, there is always a better time to win a pot. So that’s where you have to place the money.
