In poker there are good bets and bad bets – the game is simply a way of determining who can tell the difference. This is where the concept of pot odds comes into play. Put simply, pot odds means is there enough in the pot to call a bet.

Texas Holdem Odds And Probabilities
How To Calculate Pot Odds In Texas Holdem

How to Calculate Pot Odds in Texas Holdem Poker. When faced with a drawing situation after the flop hits the board in Texas Hold’em, successful poker players will always calculate the pot odds to determine whether to continue playing the hand and seeing the turn and river cards.

The fundamental principle of playing a drawing hand in poker is that you need a pot big enough to call. When we have a flush draw or a straight draw we will make our hand on the next card almost 20% of the time (19% for flush and 17% for the straight draw). That is, 20% of the time we will make our desired hand and 80% we won’t. The ratio 20 to 80 can be expressed as odds of 4-to-1. Therefore, if the pot is $80 we can almost call a $20 bet to break-even. I say almost because we have to make a profit so, a call of $20 is appropriate when there is more than $80 in the pot.

Know the Odds

You should already know how to calculate odds based upon the number of “outs”. If you don’t know the odds of hitting certain common draws then please go back and study our previous lesson on calculating odds and outs in poker. For the benefit of this lesson we’ll include the handy chart below:

Calculating the pot odds in Texas holdem helps a gambler know when to fold or raise. The pot odds are a ratio between the current size of a poker pot and the cost of a call. Calculating this ratio allows gamblers to make informed decisions on the probability of winning and whether betting is worth the cost.
If your outs ratio is 9/50, and your pot odds ratio is 1/20, your outs ratio is higher. This means that you should probably bet on this hand because the chance you have of receiving a card you need is worth betting the small amount it takes to win the whole pot. These two Texas Hold'Em odds are the easiest to calculate and the most used.

Table: Odds and outs from the flop and the turn to the river:

We have created a printable PDF version of the poker drawing odds chart (opens in a new window). You will need Adobe Acrobat on your computer to view it on screen. We recommend you print the chart and be sure to memorize these odds, particularly the common draws – as your time is better spent analyzing your opponents’ play rather than attempting to perform mathematical calculations in your head.

Track the Pot Size

Part of the concept of pot odds is to focus on the calculation of how to figure the odds of your hand becoming a winner. The other part of the equation is to know how much is actually in the pot in order to know what odds it is offering you.

If you’re playing poker online then the size of the pot should be in clear view at all times – simple! If you’re playing poker live then it’s as easy as paying attention and using basic arithmetic to know the pot size at every step of the way. All one needs to do is multiply the total amount bet on each street by the number of active players and add that sum to the blinds if they are not participating in the hand. Hold that total in your head and add the subsequent total of the next street’s betting and you will always have the pot total available to calculate your pot odds. Here are some critical words of advice: know what is in the pot at all times. How else can you make proper mathematical decisions? Amazon prime video for mac.

Calculating the Pot Odds

Free dj software mac os x. At this stage you should know the odds of hitting your card(s) and the size of the pot. The next step is to know what odds the pot is offering you. The best way to teach you is to use an example hand. Take a look at figure 1, below:

Figure 1

As you can see, we have 9 outs for the nut flush draw, so the odds of hitting our flush on the river are roughly 20% or 4-to-1 odds. There is $450 in the pot, and player 2 bets $150, which now makes the total pot $600. It’s going to cost us $150 to win $600. How do we calculate these figures to give us the pot odds? This is fairly simple as 600/150 = 4, so we have 4-to-1 odds for our money.

If we want to know the percentage then we add the bet (call amount) to the pot, to give us a total pot figure. In this example it would be: 150 + 600 = 750. Once we have this figure then we would have to perform the following formula: call amount / the total pot size. In our example this would be 150 / 750 = 0.2, or 20%.

Now we know the pot odds, should we call or not? In our example we can justify the call as we’re getting 4-to-1 pot odds and our odds of hitting and winning is also 4-to-1. But remember it’s a break-even call over the long term if we’re only counting the flush draw. Ideally we’d want the pot to be a little bigger or their bet to be a little smaller. However, if we believe that hitting either an Ace of King (giving us 6 additional outs) on the river would beat our opponent then we’d have more than enough odds to call the bet.

In poker, whenever the pot odds exceed the odds against making your hand, it pays to keep playing. When the odds against your hand coming in exceed the reward associated with it, it’s usually a bad deal. A simple way to think about this is as follows:

When the prize exceeds the cost, you should call.
If the cost is more than the money you figure to win, fold.

…did you know that AK flops a flush draw 11% of the time?

The new book Optimizing Ace King has a complete chapter on playing draws (along with chapters on playing pairs, turn & river play, and even ideal lines when AK totally misses the board).

Effective hand range estimation top 20 no limit holdem hands comes down to constantly old town temecula gambling cowboy considering your opponent’s actions and attempting to narrow down the selection of cards they could be holding to as small a range as possible. 9.Instead, the strategy of choice has become to think about your opponent as if they were holding a number of possible cards. Top 20 no limit holdem hands. Now there's in the middle and we get to see a flop. Ace-King Offsuit.

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Let’s look at another example:

Figure 2 Keygen autodesk revit 2012 activacion seriali.

Here we have a straight and a flush draw, meaning we have 15 possible outs. The odds of hitting one of our outs on the turn is 31.9% or 2.13-to-1. The pot contains $36 ($24 + $12) and it’ll cost us $12 to call.

Are we getting enough pot odds to call? Let’s do the figures, first in odds….$36 (total pot) / $12 (cost to call) = 3. Expressed as a ratio this would be 3-to-1 odds, meaning we’ll win once every 4 times. In percentage terms… the pot odds can be expressed as 25%. Our drawing odds are 31.9%. Since the pot is offering us better odds than our draw, we should call the $12 bet.

Let’s continue with this hand example. As you can see in figure 3, we didn’t hit on the turn, we check and our opponent then bets $60 into the existing $48 in the pot.

Figure 3

Are we still getting the correct pot odds to call in the hopes of hitting a straight or flush? The answer is no.

The pot odds are now 1.8-to-1 (108 / 60) or 35.7% in percentage terms. Our drawing odds are 2.07-to-1 or 32.6%. Since the pot odds are less than the odds of hitting, in this instance we should fold. To call a bet here we’d need the pot to be a little bigger or our opponents bet to be a little lower. He has priced us out with his overbet.

So, that old feeling we had, “There is a bunch of money in the pot, I call”, was and is a sound tactic. Now we know more precisely when it is profitable and when it is not profitable to go in on draws. Knowing pot odds does two things; it lets us concentrate on the other players and turns poker into a game of skill.

Make Your Opponents Pay

Let’s take a quick look at a situation when you’re the one with a made han

Calculating Pot Odds Texas Holdem