That’s right, reverse implied odds are ugly indeed. Just as the implied odds help you make money and win big pots, the reverse implied odds – you got it – do the exact opposite: they cost you pots and they cost you big pots.
In order to understand how reverse implied odds work, picture the following: you play your low pocket pair in hopes of hitting your trips. You do hit them on the flop and your opponent hits top pair or two pairs or whatever. You pot commit him and you get him all-in. The implied odds worked nicely for you, didn’t they? Now put yourself in the shoes of your opponent. How do you like those reverse implied odds now?
The fundamental theory behind good-old basic tight aggressive play says you should play very tight on the flop and act decisively on hands where you think you have a definite edge. In practice though, things are much more complicated than that. You will run into situations when you do have something on the flop, something that may well be a pot-winner, but in the same time that same hand may well be dominated.
If someone bets into you on the flop on such a hand and you decide to make the call, you’re staring down right into the ugly face of the reverse implied odds. If the hand were to be over with that call on the flop, you’d be OK, however, there are still two streets and two more opportunities for your opponent to bet and let those implied odds work for him. This whole situation may end up costing you a lot of money. The dilemma in the above described situation is the following: your hand may well be the best one, but – due to the reversed implied odds – it may cost you a lot to find out, and therefore, if you happen to lose, you’ll lose big.
The biggest problem in flopping a marginal hand is that – especially if he has position on you - your opponent may decide to bail out on a later street if he feels he is beat. In this case, you win a small pot only. It’s a lose-lose situation for you, because if you are right in your assumption that your hand is indeed the best one at the table you win small, and if you’re wrong, you lose big.
If your opponent is short-stacked and you only have to call his bet on the flop, you’re OK because you’re safe from the reverse implied odds, but if he can make you pay for seeing a showdown, you’re in trouble.
One of the most frustrating hands that can hit you comes about when you make a weak top pair on a flush-draw flop, and your opponent bets into you. Such moves often turn out to be semi-bluffs, but you will probably have to cough up your entire stack before you find out.
How can you fight off the reverse implied odds? You cannot avoid getting into reverse implied odds situations, but you can learn to spot such situations and you can pretty well make sure you do not let the pot escalate when you do run into it. Here’s an idea you should always remember about reverse implied odds: it always costs you more money to try to keep your opponent honest than the money you’ll make when you’re right and you do indeed have the better hand. After all, it works the same way implied odds do, only vice-versa.
Sign up for a rakeback deal as it’ll take the bite out of your losses in a pretty efficient manner. If you’re a marginal loser, chances are rakeback will even turn you into a winner.
A pair is always a welcome guest in a player’s pocket as it gives him a variety of options to generate value. If your pair is a high one (like JJ, QQ, KK, or AA), your course of action is pretty simple. If you manage to get someone to call your all-in on anything weaker than that, you’ll have succeeded.
Sometimes it’s wiser to slow play your high pocket pair, but you should be aware that whenever you give your opponents free cards, they run a pretty good chance to crack your pair.
If your pocket pair is a small one though, things get more complicated. A pair will seldom improve with the board because it has very few outs to hit a set, and completing a flush or a straight is also less likely.
Should you just muck your small pocket pairs then? Well, sometimes you may have to do that (especially when faced with a huge raise), but if possible, you should attempt to see a flop on it. The implied odds make playing such hands worthwhile in the long-run. What are implied odds?
Whenever you call the BB (or whatever else you have to call) to see the flop on a small pocket hand, you give up value because the immediate result of your move is a negative EV one. You make the call in hopes of catching a set on the flop, and most of the time you will not catch the flop, so the call will cost you money. The few times that you do catch your set though will more than make up for your losses and that’s where your implied odds enter the equation, making an apparently bad call a good one over the long-run.
With that in mind, what you need to seek are cheap flops. By minimizing the money you spend on seeing the flops that do not land you your set, you’ll maximize your overall winnings. Tight tables are excellent for set-mining as they will allow you to see many cheap flops.
Many of the online poker cash tables however are ultra-aggressive, which means you won’t exactly be able to sneak under the radar and give your low pair the implied odds they deserve. If you stick to limping under such circumstances, you’ll lose the value you would’ve gained through your set-farming, so obviously, a different approach is required.
The strategy you need to implement when faced with a low pocket pair dilemma at a very aggressive table is to turn on your preflop aggression level. That’s right, you need to put more money into an apparently bad call. Why is that? By raising preflop, you’ll knock some of the players out of the hand early on, thus increasing your hand’s odds.
If you happen to hit your set, you’ll already have a nicely built-up pot on your hands, and if you miss it, well in that case you’ll still have good old poker playing to fall back on.
Firing out a second bullet against a hesitant opposition may well win you the pot, but if you get called, your bluff will still just be a semi-bluff because you still have a chance to make your set both on the turn and the river. Make sure you do not commit the grievous mistake of chasing after your set though. Your final hand is about 70% made on the flop, so there’s not really much you can do after that.
Regardless of how you decide to approach the pocket pair matter, always play on a rakeback deal. The best rakeback deals will give you money back on every real money hand that you play, and that is extremely profitable, especially when it comes to cash games.