Ok, I've been having trouble figuring this up at the table in a few situations, so I want to review it. Easy is if the initial bettor is the only one in the hand: You raise to 3 times his bet plus the original pot.

But it's more complicated if various players have called a bet to you. I want to make a raise here so that the initial bettor is getting 2:1 for my first scenario.

To make this an easy general formula that one can calcuate right at the table, let's call the initial bet b, and the pot, INCLUDING all bets already in, p. My raise is going to be a total of r.

Now, the initial bettor has to call r-b. For him to be getting 2:1 on the call, we have 2*(r-b) = p + r, hence, 2*r - 2*b = p + r iff r = p + 2*b.

So, your raise is simply to total pot (INCLUDING all bets already in) plus twice the initial bet. So, if someone bets $15 into a $25 pot, 2 callers to you, the current pot is 25 + 45 = 70, and you add 30 to that. So, a raise to 100 means that the initial bettor has to call 85 for a shot at a pot of 170. Looks good to me.

I'll put the second case I've been having difficulty with in a separate post in this same thread.

Part 2: The re-raise with 2:1

Ok, now you've bet and have been raised. I'll try to make this as general as possible, so you may have one flat caller. I'm going to assume that whoever the flat caller is will fold here--not necessarily a valid assumption, but you need to know who you're actually playing this hand against. I'm going to assume you're playing it against the raiser and are considering a re-raise.

The raiser has made it r to go, and the total pot-size, INCLUDING all bets already in, is p. We're solving for R here, where R is your re-raise quantity and b is the size of your original bet.

Raiser now has to call R-r (assuming folds from anyone else--this works best if it's already HU, but whatever), and the total pot is now going to be p + R - b.

So, p + R - b = 2*R - 2*r
p - b + 2*r = R.

Ok, this really isn't that bad: Essentially, you just pull your bet out of the original pot, and make it pot plus double the raise. So, if you bet $25 into a $25 pot, and get raised to $100, we have a pot (without your bet) of $125, so it should be $325 to give 2:1.

And: raiser has to call $225 for a pot of $450.

Ais... I never passed 3rd grade math... but all of that looked pretty good to me...

BTW... what percentage of the people you play in your live game (which I'm supposing are the games you're referring to) do you think actually pay attention to "pot odds"...? Most of the people I play just see "big bet" (usually over $40-50) or "small bet" (<$40)... Also, I see em calling allins with draws anyway...

lol...

Well, the very simple general formula for ALL situations seems to be this for raises: Take the total current pot, including all bets in except yours, and then raise to that plus two times whatever the bet is coming to you.

As to your other question: Unless things turn around, I'm about ready to switch casinos, because I think we've pretty much busted all but about 3 or 4 truly bad players remaining--although sometimes some guys from the limit table will come around to give us their money.

The bad players don't pay attention to pot odds here but imo are simply victims of pot odds (and implied odds) for precisely that reason.

The better players do pay attention to that (although they often still don't have a problem chasing a flush or straight in an unraised pot at least as far as the turn--they're assuming some implied odds). But, more importantly in NL, I think, they pay attention to what various bet-sizes MEAN. For example, at first if I had KK and the flop came Krags with 2 to a flush, I was betting half the pot. As soon as I realized that they had gotten this one figured out, I switched over to just always betting exactly the pot if I planned on betting at all.

They've now somewhat caught on to my big semi-bluff raises (but I don't think realize that I do it on sets, too, and I think I still have some room to maneuver here), also making for some difficulties at times. Anyhow, the closest B&M game the last few nights has felt like it's starting to dry up a bit--part of it, I think, has been the way the cards are falling, but part of it is that we know each other too well by now.

I do still have some ideas for shifting gears, getting better reads and such, but the going has gotten noticeably slower at my closest casino.