Profitable neutral EV side bets

Depending on where you play most rooms will have some sort of capped buy in on games at the 5-10NL level and below. This can be incredibly constricting especially when playing games where the buy in is restricted to 100BBs or less. The simple fact of the matter is that in these shorter stacked games especially in a full ring environment most of the time you have to make the best hand in order to win. This can become very tedious and boring especially if you are correctly not flat calling preflop raises with implied odds types of hands when the effective stacks are not deep. Certain rooms are strict and certain rooms are loose with their rules. Most fall somewhere in the middle when it comes to enforcing the cap strictly.

One of the ways to get extra money on to the table while following the strict capped rules is through neutral EV gambling. Whether you make side bets on black or red flops or a basketball game that might be going on in the background if the other players don't complain and the casino allows it whether you win or lose the neutral ev wager does not matter as long as you continue to top off your stack if you lose. Usually the other players will not complain about what is going on as it adds a sense of gambling action to the game. I would certainly recommend oking this with the room and making sure that the other regs will not complain first, however. Anything to get extra money onto the table in capped games is going to be better for the more skilled player and a great way to do this is to make it look like you like to gamble.

On a completely different note I will directly credit 2+2 legend and Crush Live Poker coach Limon with the following bits of wisdom. People bet with the hearts not their brains when it comes to politics. Back around the time of the 2008 election when Nate Silver's 538.com predicted Barack Obama's presidential campaign to win with over 90 percent certainty (due to complex county and district polling as it related to the electoral college) it was easy to bet staunch republicans even money at the table on the election. I saw it happen many times. It was kind of crazy because the same people would not give extra points betting on their home NFL team yet they were huge political gambling fish. This unbalanceness also existing in online sports books where you could wager on Obama and only lay 3-1. I have a feeling that a lot of the general public caught on to this "arbitrage" and it will not be as easy going into 2016. But keep your eye out for these lucrative political side bets that can make you extra money at the poker table especially as we approach the next general election. Remember our presidential election system is based upon a state by state winner take all electoral count not a direct popular vote.