Ok, this is something i've been thinking about for literally 5 minutes but it makes sense to me :P
The thing to remember about poker is that no matter how good your hand is pre and (usually) post-flop you're opponent(s) will still have outs. In other words you're not going to get 1/1 or 100% odds.
With that in mind i will attempt to justify my belief that you cannot just play the odds in tournament poker.
Tournament poker differs fundementally from cash game poker. The goal in a cash game is to accumilate as many chips as possible over an infinite ammount of time. The goal in tournament poker is to survive for an - albeit unknown - finite ammount of time.
Lets assume that you're playing a hand, the same hand in both a cash game and a tournament. According to the pot odds you should call because you are 75% favourite and you are putting in less than 75% of the pot, however you ARE commiting your full stack.
In the cash game this is an easy call. You know that even if you lose this time, in the long run if you make the same move in this situation every time you will accumilate more chips.
In the tournament you would also think that this is an easy call. But lets say for sake of argument that this hand is happening on the bubble of the tournament. Not such an easy call now. a 25% of finishing empty handed or fold to survive longer and make the money.
The above example is quite specific. But the other problem with pots odds is they work out over hundreds of hands. In a tournament you have to survive which means you can NEVER lose when all in. Lets say you were following the pot odds and everytime you made the "correct" call for all of your chips you were 60% favourite
The first time you do this you have a 60% of survival
The 2nd time you do this you have a 36% of surviving BOTH hands, which you need to do to cash
The 3rd time you have a mere 21.6% chance of surviving all three hands
Lets assume that the situation only occurs three time a tournament you will still make the cash 21% of the time. But in my SNGs i want to be cashing somewhere around the 50% mark and this is why i believe pot odds cannot be used as the lone factor in making decisions for your tournament life
Feel free to debate in the comments.
This is an opinion based around mathematical facts.
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2 comments
Some people agree, saying survival is more important than taking small edges with odds.
Others say that if you play tons of tournaments over a long period of time(say you're a tournament specialist), you should take your edges, because in the long run of ur career it is profitable.