Expected vs. Implied Odds
I'm reading Sklansky's Theory of Poker and trying to understand the difference between expected and implied odds. From my understanding, implied odds are the pot odds you get by considering how much you'll get your opponent to call you for in future rounds of betting. There's also the case where you are behind, when you have to calculate how much you'll call for and still be second best, known as reverse implied odds.
Sklansky calls effective odds the real odds you are getting from the pot when you call a bet with more than one card to come, which includes all the future calls you'll have to make up to the end of the hand.
I fail how to see how these are really different besides that in one case you're the one doing the calling and in the other one it's your opponent.
I've narrowed the difference down to a few different possibilities:
1. Implied odds apply when you will be ahead and your opponent will be doing the calling. Effective odds apply when you are behind and will be doing the calling. This can't be right because what I have described is really reverse implied odds and not effective odds.
2. Implied odds apply when you make your hand on the next card only, effective odds involve considering your hand when you play it all the way to the river. This also doesn't seem right because you'd still want to consider your implied odds if you make your hand on the river (for example, "will he call me when I obviously make a flush with a 4th spade on the river")
3. Implied odds only apply when you know the pot is gonna get big. Possible
4. Implied odds subsume effective odds and thinking about your implied odds means thinking about your effective odds.
5. Effective odds only consider your hand. Implied odds considers the relative hand strength with respect to your opponent. This seems like the strongest possibility
6. Effective odds only apply in limit games where the future pot size is easy to predict. Implied and reverse implied odds are more useful in no limit games where you can only make generalizations like "my opponent will bet (or call) big/small depending on what card comes."
2 Replies
Implied odds assume that additional money will go into the pot later. So even if you are not getting the exact odds you need to call a bet it may be appropriate to call assuming your opponent will call additional bets when you hit your draw, giving you the implied odds to call.
Effective odds are your actual odds at that moment, like if you're facing an all-in bet and you're facing an immediate decision to call X to win Y with no possibility of future action. So in that case the odds are just the odds.
"Effective odds are your actual odds at that moment, like if you're facing an all-in bet and you're facing an immediate decision to call X to win Y with no possibility of future action. So in that case the odds are just the odds."
I believe this is the defintion of Immediate Odds; the ratio of the pot size to the amount you have to invest
Effective Odds, as I think Sklansky defined it, assumes future bets and possibly no hit on the next street so you will have to make an additional investment to possibly hit your draw on the river
