Calculating Poker Pot Odds
In this article, I will just teach you quite an easy way to calculate poker odds at the table. This will give you a fairly accurate idea of what your odds will be. The downside to this shortcut is that it is not 100% accurate, but it is very, very close to the real odds if you were to calculate them the long(er) way.
You may be asking why knowing your odds is so important. This is simple donate a car to charity by knowing your chances of completing your hand and winning the pot, this will give you good information so that you can make informed decisions about when to call, and in the long run make you a consistent winner.
As an example, if you were to gamble on something as simple as a flip of a coin, you would be expecting 1:1 on your money as there is a 50% chance of it being either heads or tails. If you played this all night you should break even. Now for arguments sake somebody offered you 2:1 on your money based on a coin flip this would make it a very profitable thing to play. In theory you should lose half of the flips - but the ones that you do win, you will be making 2:1 on your money and, in the long run, come out in front.
The first thing you will need to know when calculating the chances of making your hand are your outs. What cards will make my hand?
For instance if you are holding two hearts, and the flop also contains to hearts you are drawing to a flush with two cards still to come. Now there are still 9 hearts in the deck that can complete the flush for you.
In the short cut method I am about to teach you consider each of your outs to be worth 2% then multiply that by how many cards are still to come. So for your flush draw you calculation should be as follows
9 outs X 2% = 18% 18% X two cards to come = 36%
As you can see you have about a 36% (By calculating the long way you will find your odds are 35%, so you can see the shortcut is very close) chance of making your hand, which means you will make it about 1/3 of the times you play it.
Does this mean I should only call one in every three times I flop a flush draw?
No, the answer to that question is you should call based on the pot odds.
Pot odds sound scary but are very simple, they are merely just the money in the pot (plus the bet) in ratio to how much it will cost you to call.
For instance, if there is $40 in the pot and your opponent bets $10 the pot odds are 5:1, which means you will need to win the hand 1 out of every 6 times to break even.
Now you know that you are going to make your flush and win the pot 1 out of every 3 times, so in the long run you will make a tidy profit if your opponent offers you odds like this.
So as you can see if the pot odds are greater than the odds of making your hand you should call as in the long run this is profitable. But if the pot odds are shorter than your hand odds you should generally fold.
Of course this is just a quick guide so that you know how to calculate poker odds for your own use. You will need to consider many more aspects of the hand before deciding whether to call, fold or raise. Things such as “implied odds” need to be taken into account, and of course the obvious things such as if your opponent is bluffing.
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