"If you're planning to call a bet, you're better off betting
it yourself." Behind this poker mantra is the reality that by betting,
you give yourself two ways to win.
You can win the pot with the best hand at showdown, or you
can win it immediately by having your opponent fold. Fold equity refers
to your chances of causing your opponent to fold.
Technically speaking, if you think your opponent will fold 20% of the time in a $200 pot, you have $40 in fold equity.
However,
in broader terms, fold equity can be used to signify that you're
putting thought into the fact that you can make your opponent fold.
Making Moves With No Hand
If you take a look at a nosebleed hand from PL.com's MarketPulse biggest pots section, you can see how fold equity shapes entire games. These high-stakes players are so well-versed in reading their opponent's range that they can make moves with no hand at all.
They
sometimes rely entirely on fold equity. And fold equity can win you
pots that you have no business even being in in the first place.
A
note of caution, though: I would never suggest for you to rely entirely
on fold equity in a hand. To be successful at that you would need to
have incredible hand-reading skills.
Unlike lolphillhellmuthlol we are mere mortals and cannot read people's souls. So leave the stone-cold bluffs for the pros.
What you can and should do is start incorporating more semi-bluffs into your play. Let's take a look at
an example where we flop a flush draw and use fold equity in our decision whether to smooth-call, fold or raise
infrared contact lenses.
You are playing in a $1/$2 game at your local casino. Effective stacks are $200. You are dealt A
♠ T
♠
in the cutoff. A player limps from early position and it is folded to
you. You make it $10 and only the early-position limper calls.
The flop comes 7
♠ J
♣ Q
♦.
Your opponent donk bets $15. From what you know about your opponent, he
would likely do this with any pair of jacks or queens as well as with
some weak draws.
What Should You Do?
Well,
you do not have the best hand currently, and with one overcard and a
gut-shot, you are not getting the correct odds to call. That eliminates
calling from your options.
You're left with raising or folding.
Folding, although safe, is not the best play. Plus, you want to be the
one wielding fold equity to your advantage - don't let your opponent be
the one to profit.
So let's take a look at raising.
There are a few reasons for choosing to raise. His range is wide and consists of many hands that cannot stand much action.
Also, your perceived range (how he sees your hand) is strong. You
raised pre-flop and are now choosing to raise his flop bet. This
represents a made hand, one that wants action.
Of course in
reality you only have a weak draw. However, because the range you're
representing is so strong and his is primarily weak, you'll often pick
this pot up with a raise on the flop.
Even if your villain doesn't fold, all is not lost. You still have seven outs that can improve your hand on the turn. It is a semi-bluff, not a complete bluff.
Fold equity calculations do not work if your opponent doesn't ever fold. Fold equity is the chance that he
will fold, so if he doesn't fold, factoring the chance that he will into your considerations is a pointless endeavor.
Getting Mathematical
If
you wish to get mathematical, you can assign percentages to the likely
outcomes. Using the hand above, I punched in our opponent's range into PokerStove to come up with some data.
The information you have about your opponent's hand is that he limped
from early position, then called a small raise, and when the flop came
out he led into you for two-thirds the pot on a 7
♠ J
♣ Q
♦ board.
You
can assign him a range of something like TT-77, KQs, Q9s+, J9s+, T8s+,
ATo, KQo, QTo+, JTo, T9o - which is a pretty wide range. Against it
you're a 40% dog.
However, because the bulk of that range is
weak, he will fold to a raise a high percentage of the time. What the
exact percent is is impossible to determine, although it's safe to say
that he will be folding enough times to make raising a more profitable
play on your part than folding.
In Tournaments
In no form of poker do you rely on fold equity more than in tournament poker.
As the blinds increase and your M value decreases, you're going to need to start stealing blinds
to keep afloat. If you do not steal blinds, you won't last long. The
blinds will swallow you up and your tournament will be finished.
Most
tournaments see rapid blind increases. There just isn't time to sit
back and wait for aces. You have to make do, and you make do by
"stealing" with worse-than-average hands.
Let's say you have seven BBs in the late stages of an online multi-table sit-and-go.
The average stack is likely around 15 BBs, and the chip leader may only
have 30 BBs. It's time to get moving and accumulate some chips.
In this stage of the tournament you have two options, shove or fold. (This article
fills in the background as to why these are your two choices.) As we
established earlier, good hands are not going to come along fast enough
to save you, so you must start shoving worse-than-average hands.
Shoving a hand like T
♥ 9
♥
isn't a play made for value. Your goal is to have your opponents fold
so you can take down the blinds and antes without a fight.
You
rely mostly on fold equity. That's not to say that you should push any
two
infrared marked cards and rely completely on your opponents folding, because that
just isn't going to happen all the time.
Let's look at a common tournament situation:
You are playing a 45-person tournament online.
There are 16 people left and top seven get paid. You have $4,000 and
the blinds are $300/$600. It's folded to you on the button, and you have
7
♣ 9
♣. You shove all-in.
Do you do it for value?
No. This is a steal-raise, meaning that you hope your opponents will
fold. If every time you went all-in you were called, this would not be a
profitable move because you're going to be a dog each time.
The
fold equity that your shove has makes the move profitable. Most of the
time you're going to win this pot without showdown. Those times you are
called you will likely be a 60-40 dog.
The fold equity overcomes
this gap in hand value and turns an unprofitable shove into a profitable
push.
That's all there is to it.
Fold equity is a simple concept.
Understanding it won't all of a sudden let you turn water into wine,
but once you start factoring in the likelihood of your play getting your
opponent to fold, you will be able to turn a marginal situation into a
profitable one.
