Pot

The pot is everything already bet in the hand, and in poker it is the unit of measure. Bets are not big or small in dollars, they are fractions of the pot: a third, a half, a full pot, two pots. A $10 bet into a $10 pot and a $10 bet into a $100 pot are two different moves with different prices for the opponent.

The price works like this: the opponent pays your bet to win the pot together with it. Against a half-pot bet he pays one dollar for three and needs to be right one time in four. Against a full-pot bet, one time in three. Against two pots, two times in five. The bigger the bet, the less often the opponent can afford to answer.

An example from session 11

K♦K♠, a full house on K♥ Q♦ Q♥, and I bet $132.56 into a $14.96 pot, almost nine pots. The opponent folded, and rightly: a bet like that can only be answered by a hand that beats a full house. I took $14: the strongest hand of the day earned less than an average one, because the size of the bet told the opponent everything.

The same in business

Any price makes sense only relative to what it buys. A $1,000 discount is not a number, it is a share of the deal, and it reads differently in a ten-thousand contract and a million one. Whoever names a figure without the pot does not know whether the offer is expensive or cheap, and finds out from the other side.

The whole hand is in session 11: “You will never learn whether you were right about most of your decisions”.

The other terms are in the glossary.