Pot Odds
One of the first and most important examples of 'poker math' that new no-limit hold'em players need to learn is how to calculate 'pot odds.' In fact, when people talk about the 'math of poker,' a lot of the time they are mostly referring to pot odds and how an understanding of them can help you decide whether to bet, raise, call, or fold.
Put most simply, pot odds represents the ratio between what you stand to gain in a hand of poker and what you have to spend in order to get it — that is, the ratio between your reward and your risk when making any given decision during a poker hand.
Texas Hold’em Pot Odds Explained. Understanding how to calculate Texas Hold’em pot odds is a skill that helps players know when to call, raise, or fold. Poker is a card game that requires patience, practice, and skill. A lot of thought goes into making bets and knowing what to expect out of every move you make. Playing Flush and Straight Draws. Mathematics: Flushes & Straights: Simple Pot Odds: Implied Odds: Reverse Implied Odds Watch SplitSuit's video on Flushes and Flush Draws for 8 hand histories involving strategy on playing flushes in Texas Hold'em. You are on the flop with a pretty decent flush draw. You have two hearts in your hand and there are another two on the flop.
Calculating Pot Odds
For example, if there is $80 in the pot and your opponent bets $20, that makes a total of $100 in the middle. That $100 is the reward you can get if you're willing to risk $20 to call the bet. Pot odds are expressed as a ratio (reward-to-risk). In this case you're having to risk $20 to win $100, so your pot odds are 100-to-20, or 5-to-1.
That's the scenario poker players most often describe when talking about pot odds — that is, when facing a bet and deciding whether or not to call or fold. You add the amount of the bet to what is already in the pot to calculate the reward, the bet you need to call represents the risk, and the pot odds 'being given' to call is that reward-to-risk ratio.
Of course, you can also talk about pot odds after a player raises. Say you decide not just to call that $20 bet described above, but to raise to $80. That would mean your opponent has to call $60 to have a chance at winning what is now $180 in the middle — 180-to-60 or 3-to-1 pot odds.
That might seem simple enough — a little bit of addition and an easy division problem, and you can calculate pot odds.
But why bother? There are lots of reasons.
One big reason why you want to stay generally aware of what your pot odds are — which means keeping track of how big the pot is at all times and being able to compare the pot size to each bet — is that doing so helps you estimate whether or not the pot odds being offered to you are favorable or unfavorable given the situation.
Let's look at three common circumstances in no-limit hold'em in which pot odds can be helpful when making decisions.
Using Pot Odds When Playing a Drawing Hand
Say you are on a flush draw and have with the board showing . There is $120 in the pot, and your opponent has bet $60. You could call to see the river card, but are the pot odds favorable enough for you to make the call?
It's easy enough to see that the reward is $180 ($120 in the pot plus the $60 bet), and so with a $60 risk you are getting 180-to-60 or 3-to-1 pot odds. Is that good or bad?
You believe you probably have to make a flush in order to make a better hand than your opponent's, so that means you have nine outs — the nine remaining clubs — to make your hand. You can see six cards (the two in your hand plus the four on the board), leaving 46 unknown cards, so you can estimate your chance of seeing a club fall on the river to be 9 out of 46, or just over 4-to-1 against.
Compare your pot odds (3-to-1 to call) to the odds you'll make your flush (a little worse than 4-to-1 against). It's clear that calling isn't such a good choice — that the pot odds aren't favorable for calling — because over the long term calling is not a profitable play.
Let's say you were to make this call 100 times. About 20 times you'd make your flush on the river (actually a little less, but we'll round it up). You'd be risking $60 x 100 or $6,000. But your reward would only be $180 x 20 or $3,600. After making this call 100 times and winning only 20 hands, you'd have lost $2,400! (Note: we aren't considering what extra money might be won or lost after the river card, but just the profitability of this particular turn call.)
Pot odds are favorable when they are greater than the odds against making your hand. If the pot odds were 5-to-1 here, it would be a good call with it being just over 4-to-1 against making the flush. But 3-to-1 pot odds are unfavorable when drawing one card to make a flush.
Using Pot Odds to Decide Whether to Call a Preflop Raise
Pot odds can also be compared not just to a specific probability (like drawing to a flush), but also to a more general estimate of your chances in a hand.
Say for example you're playing $1/$2 no-limit hold'em and get dealt in the big blind. A player raises to $7 from the button and it folds to you.
First off... what are your pot odds here? There is $10 in the middle (the $1 small blind + the $2 big blind + the $7 raise), and you have to call $5 to stay in the hand. That's 2-to-1 pot odds.
Now, think about the prospect of playing out of position. It's a hand without a lot of potential that is almost certainly worse than whatever the player on the button who raised has. Unless you flop a couple of diamonds or perhaps trips or two pair, you're not likely to feel good about going very far with this hand. Are these 2-to-1 odds favorable?
Pot Odds Practice
No, they aren't. You could quantify this perhaps, noting how you with two suited cards you flop a flush draw about 11% of the time, you flop two pair about 2% of the time, and you flop trips about 1.3% of the time — that adds up to around 14% good flops, meaning it's worse than 6-to-1 against your seeing a good flop. That's just an estimate, really, but is obviously way worse than the 2-to-1 pot odds, so folding is in order.
What if a player raises to $7 from early position and five other players including the small blind call before the action reaches you in the big blind with your ? Now there's $44 in the middle and you have to pay $5 to see the flop. Those are almost 8-to-1 pot odds, which are in fact greater than the odds against your flopping something good — you might consider calling.
Using Pot Odds to Decide Whether to Call a Suspected Bluff
Pot odds can also be relevant when deciding whether or not to call what you think might be an opponent's bluff.
You've reached the river with your and the board shows . Your opponent raised before the flop and you called, and you called his bets on both the flop and turn. Now there's $100 in the middle and he's betting $50, giving you 3-to-1 pot odds to call.
You suspect strongly he could be bluffing, but you think it's possible he might have something like aces, kings, jacks, ace-queen, or king-queen and have you beat. While it's not feasible to calculate exactly the likelihood he's bluffing, you might be able to make a rough estimate — say, that he's probably bluffing at least a third of the time here.
That would make it 2-to-1 against your tens being best, making 3-to-1 pot odds favorable for you — a profitable call to make.
Conclusion
There are many other applications of pot odds in no-limit hold'em, but you can't take advantage of them until you start to become comfortable figuring out pot odds as a hand is playing out.
This is often easier to do when playing online poker, where the betting amounts and pot sizes are shown as numbers. But even when playing live, you can with practice become increasingly at ease keeping track of what's in the pot and calculating pot odds until it becomes second nature to you.
And once you do, you can then use pot odds to help direct your decision-making in a variety of contexts.
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Full Tilt
Pot odds are defined by the price you are getting on the bet compared to the size of the total pot, so if the pot is $3 and you have to call $1 into the pot you will be getting 3:1 in pot odds.
What do we need this information for?
This is useful in knowing whether we are getting the correct price to draw to our hand, for example, if we flop an open-ended straight draw against our opponent and we need to hit our hand in order to win the pot we will have around 34% equity…
If our opponent bets $3 into a pot of $8 what are the odds we are getting to call?
How do we calculate our Pot Odds?
We would need to call $3 into a total of $14…
to work this out we just divide 3/14 = 0.2142
Then just times this number by 100 to get the percentage of equity needed
0.2142 x 100 = 21.42, this is the percentage of equity we need to continue in the pot 21.42%
So in this case we are getting a good price to continue with our hand here, if say our opponent bets larger though…
If our opponent bets $8 into the pot of $8 on the flop, what odds will we have then?
So, in this case, we need to call $8 into a total pot of now $24…
8/24 = 0.3333 x 100 = 33.33% equity needed
So you can see that this is getting a little closer to a poor price, as we will not realise all our equity if we will only call this one bet, a general rule on how much equity we will realise if only seeing one card is halve the amount of the percentage
What about implied odds?
Pot Odds Quiz
So there is something else to think about with regards to odds in poker and that is implied odds. This is our odds of getting more money from our opponents stack if we hit our hand, so in deep SPR ratios, we can deviate slightly from calling getting the right price for our hand because if we hit our hand we will be in a position to win a large pot from our opponents remaining stack.
On the other side of this coin though, we are going to want to play more carefully in situations where we don’t have great implied odds, so if our opponent is pretty short-stacked there is often little point in us drawing to our hand when if we hit it we stand to win very little more from their stack.
Pot Odds
Sum up on Pot Odds
How to quickly work out your equity and odds:
If you have a drawing hand like a flush draw you will have 9 outs to make a flush, with around 47 cards in the deck you can take your outs and times that number by two to get your odds of hitting your card…
So 9×2 = 18% chance of hitting your card on the next card
We have created a little cheat sheet for you to know how much equity you need to be able to call bets too!
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Pot Odds Definition
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Pot Odds And Equity
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