Me and my son just completed Dara's new PKO book and I am floored how little I knew about the format.
The limps with the big pairs, the strange hands people play, it all makes sense now.
This book is probably the fastest and most effective way to get up to speed and is well worth the money.
If you havent studied this format or at least read this book you are likely leaving money on the table somewhere in your PKO play.
I would like clarification on one thing my son may have misinterpreted as he turned an open ended straight flush draw multi way out of position. He was going to take the lead in the betting quoting the book to bet your draws.
I explained to him that it was implied that you do this as the aggressor but as the defender out of position in a multi way hand you would want to get there as cheaply as possible and then if you hit your draw to make sure you then got all your chips in the middle.
Can you confirm that this is in fact the case?
Also there were a couple minor typos early on in the book that I took note of and would like to relay them to you in return for your kindness in awarding me a copy if you like. Where would I send this to?
Thank you for your kind comments: delighted you and your son like the book.
You are thinking correctly about how to play draws. The advice we give is to bet your draws more, but this doesn't mean you should always bet them. It depends on a number of factors, like how many players are in the pot (the less there are the more aggressively you should bet), position, size of pot, how much fold
equity you have, and how likely it is you can get a bounty if you hit your draw before you're all in.
A concrete example might help:
Imagine we are on the turn with a draw that has 25% equity
Opponent checks and we can either check or shove for pot. What's the better play?
Let's go further and assume that if we miss the river our opponent will never fold, and if we hit he will fold all the time. If we shove the turn we expect him to fold half the time.
With these assumptions, we can now work out the EV of checking versus shoving the turn.
If we check, our EV is 0.25pot (we will win 25% of the time so our EV is 25% current pot from the times we hit)). This EV costs us nothing (since we don't put more chips into the pot unless we hit) so it's +0.25pot in EV
If we shove, we win that immediate pot 50% of the time (so EV is 0.5pot), and we have the other player all in the other 50% of the time. 25% of the time this happens we win 3pot so the EV of this = 0.5*0.25*3pot which is 0.375pot. The EV of this play is therefore 0.875pot (0.5 plus 0.375) but it costs us a 1pot bet to make so it's -0.125pot overall
Therefore in this case we are better off checking by a margin of 0.375pot.
That's the case for a normal tournament. However, if this is a PKO things change. Leaving our assumptions the same, our EV of checking remains +0.25pot. But the EV of the shove changes, since we will now win a bounty when we shove, get called, and win. How big this is will depend on the size of the bounty relative to the amount of chips we are shoving. It could be minor (0.1pot), significant (0.5pot) or massive (1pot or more). If it's value is more than 0.375pot then now shoving becomes better.
Usually (but not always) the shove needs some fold equity to be better than the non shove, but if the bounty is a massive factor it could potentially be better to shove even if we know we are always getting called.
That's just one example: every situation is different so has to be assessed in game, but the general principle is that shoving when you cover other players is always more profitable in a PKO than in a normal tournament. This doesn't mean it's always the most profitable play though.
On the typs, if you could send them to my co-author Barry, that would be awesome.
Thanks again
