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Fold Equity - Why the aggressive player win the money.
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The big winners in poker online or offline are almost always very aggressive. This is true in tournaments, SnGs and cash games. The exception can maybe be at the lowest limits but at medium and higher limits the winners seems to be very aggressive or extremely aggressive.
The reason for this is something called “Fold Equity”.
Fold equity is the equity a player can consider himself likely to gain if he bets. It equates to:
(Gain in equity if opponent(s) fold) X (likelihood that opponents fold).
It can also be explained as, if you bet you have two ways to win, get the best hand at the end or get the opponent to fold.
In SnGs this concept is extremely important. When the blinds gets very big in comparison to the stacks, you have to raise with lots of hands to gain fold equity. It is often not the player with the best hands who wins. It’s the player who gains most fold equity.
If for example the blinds is 200-400 and you and the only remaining opponents in the hand, the blinds, have stacks of 1800 each.
You have K-8 off and go all in. Your opponents will fold most times. This gives you a profit of 600.
If the big blind calls with a hand like A-7, he will win this hand 60% of the times and you will win 40%.
This gives you a theoretical loss of just 280. (You will win 1800+200=2000 4 times or ten; this is 8000; and you will lose 1800 6 times of ten; this is 10800. A total loss of 2800 in ten times or -280 for one pot.
This play will give you a profit if you are called 68% of the times or less. And in most SnGs you will only be called 1 time in 3 in this situation.
Without these aggressive plays you have very little chance to be a long term winner in SnGs but this is also true in multi table tournaments and cash games.
The passive players often believe that they are losing because of bad luck. When they play a pot they are often favourites against the aggressive players. But the aggressors can afford to play a few pots as small underdogs because of the amount of fold equity they are gaining when they bet and the passive players fold.
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