5 ways situations where you mess up good pot odds:

1) You’re playing in a hu sng, the blinds are 25/50 with 1200 effective stacks and your opponent, who’s opening about 2/3 of buttons, minraises to 100. You have KT. You know shoving KT shows a small EV. This does not mean you should shove! Calling here, especially given the great pot odds, has a much better expectation, almost regardless of how your opponent plays post. If he’s a weak player post, it’s an even better call.

2) Same situation, you call KT and take it post flop. You do not, I repeat, do not try to win every pot. You had 3:1 pot odds post flop, the adjustment to these odds is to take them. Play a wide range and be patient and wait for good spots. You don’t need to win that much.

3) You’re facing a player who loves the small bet. He like min cbetting, small thin river bets, and triple barreling small. I see so many players here trying to make plays at these bets, trying to c/r bluff a lot. I think the reason for this is players feel that if they call, his opponent will know he’s weak and beat him. But what his opponent is really doing is a) Giving you really good pot odds in every pot and b) Giving you an opportunity to build a pot every hand c) Giving you an opportunity to get big bets in on the river by c/ring him. The correct counter to this strategy is take your pot odds with draws and bad hands, c/r good hands for value, occasionally slowplay for balance, and very very occasionally c/r bluff.

4) You’re facing a loose and aggressive player who 3bets tons. However, he plays extremely tricky and 3bets to only twice your raise most of the time. Again, the correct strategy is here is to take your pot odds. 4bet your good hands, call preflop with a wide range, and don’t try to win every pot. But instead, many players try to 4bet bluff here and just end up building really big pots with a terrible hand.

5) Someone minbets and you’re oop with a weak hand. Unless you’re pretty certain that you can get this player to fold, you’d have to give a pretty good argument to pass up 6:1 or 8:1 pot odds. Even an over card or a runner runner fd may be enough to call here.

I absolutely despise players when I see them blatantly mishandling situations with good pot odds. Don’t make me have to despise you.