A - Z of Poker: Day 15

From London to Vegas in 26 Letters

Day 15: O is for ...

O is for Omaha. Well, it could be, but without P for Pot, Omaha is really not worthy of discussion so we shall postpone that topic for 1 more letter and instead look at O for Odds. I think even the least mathematical players concede there is merit in being able to quantify the value in particular situations. Some are more tractable than others, of course.

There are some genuinely complex scenarios but what surprises me greatly is how much disagreement one gets (at the table) between experienced players concerning positions as simple as a pre-flop matchup between two hands. You would think that a player would either (a) know the odds, and know they know or (b) not know, but know they don't know. Instead, I often see a wide range of "views" being given and firmly held even though there is quite simply one correct answer.

I am at a loss to explain it.

People often assume that I must know all the odds to the nth degree of accuracy. In fact I know only the most common and useful situations, and to a "give or take" degree of precision. I think this is plenty. I think it's foolish to ignore the usefulness of the basic odds, but it's an area with plenty of scope for spurious accuracy. This is my excuse, anyway, for not having studied it harder.

Actually, on my list of "things to do eventually" is to work out these odds myself, manually. I am half serious about this, as I suspect doing the work would make it much more likely I would remember and it would also give me a lot better understanding of what drives the odds in the first place. I think everyone would agree that understanding is more important than remembering in this case.

O is for "One Time". As in "One time, dealer!" or "Brick it one time" or "Ace one time" or "No Ace one time !" and so on. The power of hope and the belief in suggestion in poker. Hope keeps us going a lot of the time, I guess. Hopes are easily and quickly dashed but are equally quickly resurrected.

Of course the truest "One time" hope is for the "Big One". We hope that this time, this One Time we can be number One.

I'm hoping for a result in Vegas this "One Time" but, if not, then hopefully "Next Time".