Folding V Calling

In poker you constantly get into difficult situations. Sometimes you don't know if its best to raise, call, fold, check or move allin.
But depending on what you do in these situations, will decide how profitable a player you are, or even if you are a profit playing
poker player.

So I am going to look at one aspects of this and just look into situations where you are in marginal hands and have the difficult decision to call or fold.

So your in this situation, what do you do? Well thats up to you.
The variants in poker are to large to decide what is the right and wrong thing to do every time. But my advice is, Fold!

Why Fold, because I would rather make a bad fold than a bad call.

In a situation where you have to decide on a marginal hand for most or all of your chips, it is better in the long run to fold.

If you where to call and you win great you've doubled your money. So in the next hand in the same marginal situation you call again, and you win again. You are now on a high so when later on down the tournament and you get in this situation again, your going to call. This time you where wrong and instead of challenging for the chip lead you are now out of the tournament. So now they two great calls you made earlier where for nothing and now your out hthe tournament so even though you did the right thing twice you got it wrong once and now your out.

So what would have happened if you had folded all three times. So after folding in the first marginal situation, even though you did have the best hand, you have less chips than, if you had called. So after folding for the second time in a marginal situation, you now are a good bit behind than if you had called the two previous times. But that third marginal situation that you got into, that put you out of tournament when you where calling marginal situations, you fold and guess what your still in.

So even though you made two great calls and one bad call you end up out.
But making two bad folds and one good one your still in.
So this is why I advice folding against calling every time in a marginal situation.

The hardest thing is working out when your in a maginal situation though.
But by going by this theory and you fold every time your in doubt instead of calling you should last longer in tournament, hence giving you a better chance to get into sitaution's where you can't loss.

what do you think of this thought process

From tentwopoker

*sniff sniff*

You are half right. Folding is better than calling, most of the time. However, you're missing the more important half of the equation, which is that raising is often better than folding.

Your thought process should be:

#1 Can I raise? If not, then,
#2 Do I have to fold? If not, then,
#3 Would flatting and re-evaluating be reasonable? If not, then,
#4 Flip a coin: heads, all-in, tails, fold. Then post the hand here for analysis, since you shouldn't have answered "no" to all three other questions.

This doesn't apply to the river, of course. The river is kind of the opposite of other streets, in that checking, betting and/or calling are often more reasonable than raising or folding.

Originally Posted by Sid_07

Folding is always neutral ev.

I have to disagree on this point. Folding is only neutral ev when one is drawing dead. It is always -ev otherwise because one is giving up his pot equity. However, when that equity is small, folding can be substantially less -ev than calling.

Originally Posted by triple-t

I have to disagree on this point. Folding is only neutral ev when one is drawing dead. It is always -ev otherwise because one is giving up his pot equity. However, when that equity is small, folding can be substantially less -ev than calling.

No, folding is always, always, always 0 EV, whether you're drawing dead or holding the stone cold nuts. That's the way EV is defined - the amount of money you will statistically win or lose, relative to folding. Folding is the zero point.

You could invent another concept if you wanted... call it EV2... you could make zero EV2 losing all your chips, in which case all moves would be +EV2, and you'd be looking for the most positive one... or winning all your opponent's chips, in which case all moves would be -EV2, and you'd be looking for the least negative... or winning what's in the pot now, which might lead to some interesting insight, but which I suspect would make even commonplace calculations a lot more difficult.

A lot of beginners think of EV as being relative to how much money they had before the hand started, but that's wrong-headed. The money that's in the pot doesn't belong to you anymore, until you win the hand. You're mixing in the concept of equity, which is a different way of calculating things...

Anyway, defining folding as the zero point makes a lot of calculations easier. For instance, it means a minus EV play is always wrong... because folding is always an option, and is correct if all other moves are -EV. It means that always making +EV decisions will make you a winning player in the long run, though to maximize your profits, you still have to maximize your EV. It also makes pot odds easy to figure out; call 100 to win 200 - you're getting 2-1 on your money, since not calling is your definition of zero profit.