Question Concerning Pot Odds/Positive Expectation

[solrac87]

Well, I'm not sure if this concerns Positive Expectation directly, but I do have a question.

I was playing poker with my buddies on Friday night, and I was involved in a hand where I was dealt Kh-3h. It was a four player game, I was in the big blind, and I checked to see the flop. Flop comes 2d, 5h, 9s. I checked, and my friend bet behind me, and the other two folded. My friend to the left of me had been betting and raising like a maniac the past couple of hands, so I decided to mix up my play and I raised him. He re-raised me. Crap, didn't expect that. I'm a pretty tight player, I don't get re-raised often. So on the turn comes 8h. I check, he bets into me. I now have a flush draw, and have to put 30 cents into a pot that was around $1.60. I'm getting the rights odds, so I call. River comes 2h. I bet, he raises me, I re-raise him, he calls. He flips over pocket tens, and I show him my flush.

I was really only mixing up my play on the flop, hoping to catch a king or maybe a backdoor flush. I had a winning image going. I thought by raising, maybe he wouldn't bet on the turn and I could get a free card there. It was a well disguised hand, he surely didn't have me on two hearts. But I'm not going to do that very often, raising with nothing.

It was a bad play to raise him there on the flop, but then I thought about my call on the turn. I created my own pot odds to call there. But since I was getting good pot odds to my out odds, then I had to call (I also could have caught my king). However, he had the best hand, with the tens. So can we both have a positive expectation in the hand? Because I'm making money on the turn to the river. But so is he, correct?

How does this work? Can both people have a positive expectation?


p.s. I've won $12, $7, $13, $21, and $12 the last five poker nights. My friends are starting to get a little agitated about me winning. I think I'm doing well, ($5 buy-in, usually 5 players, play for about 7 or 8 hours.) We play an odd betting structure though, 10-20-30-40 cents, 5/10 blinds. The one time I won 21 bucks, we played 20-40, it was great. My friends want to start playing with antes instead of blinds, but I'm against it. They think that I'm not going to win as much, because I have to play more hands. What should I do? What's a good betting structure with antes?

[Sente]

Yes it is possible for more than one person to have a positive expectation at a given point of time. The best hand and draws with correct pots odds have positive expectations. Usually it is just at most two hands - the best hand and best draw - that have positive expectations.

Where does this positive value come from? Two sources. First, the equity that is already in the pot. Second, contributions from those with negative expectations.

At the turn, you have a positive expectation, as does your opponent from the equity that exists in the pot. The past is forgotten and does not affect that decision, even though your play on the flop had a negative expectation. We'll let that play lie.