Free Online Poker Games Fact Guide On How To Use Pot Odds And How To Use Simple Poker Math To Calculate Them At High Speed
Posted in Fly Fishing Gear on the February 4, 2012
Today’s poker free online games lesson is going to focus on some basic poker math and give you some easy tips and tricks on how to use at the poker table to help you make profitable decisions. I don’t really want to waste more time on the intro, so on to the poker!
It’s a fact, sad for some us but poker has a big math basis
Fortunately, standard poker math is not rocket science, and there are a number of simple tricks to help you with your calculations.
2 Core Concepts
The 2 basic math concepts are calculating outs (and your chance of hitting them) and pot odds.
In this article I am covering Pot Odds. I did Outs in the last article. See the link at the bottom of this page to find the last article.
Without understanding the concept of pot odds we really have no idea if a call will be profitable (in postflop spots and allin spots especially).
Say you are Heads Up and each of you has 10BB stacks.
> Player 1 goes allin preflop. Player 2 must now decide to fold or call.
> The pot is now 11bbs (10bb from player 1 and the bb posted by player 2), so player 2 has to decide whether or not to call 9bb for the chance to win 11bb.
This is generally expressed as a ratio, the size of the pot to the size of the call needed. In this example the pot odds are 11 to 9. Or made more simple approx. 1.2 to 1.
This means that for a profitable call, player 2 has to win 1 time for every 1.2 times they lose (or, in other words, once out of every 2.2 pots).
When a player is getting 1 to 1 on their money, they need to win the pot 50% of the time to break even calling. They make a profit when they win at a higher rate than that.
But if they can get 2 to 1 then they only need to win 33% to break even calling, that equals 1 win for every 2 losses, or said another way 1 win out of every 3 pots. This is why when we’re short stacked it’s correct to go allin lighter and call allin bets wider.
Blinds for a big chunk of your chip stacks and give you the pot odds to call, and keep in mind that if you have 2 to 1 and win 35% of the time you’re in profit.
The key with pot odds is to put your opponent on a range of hands and calculate the equity of your hand against that range. No messing, it’s hard and you need a lot of practice.
When faced with a call or fold situation, though, it comes down to estimating your outs against your opponent’s range (count your outs and use the rule of 2% and 4%) and compare that to the pot odds you’re getting. Not sure about Outs? Check out the big version of this lesson at the NoPay blog, link at the bottom of this page.
For example, if you have 9 outs on the flop with a flush draw, our call is profitable if we’re getting roughly 2 to 1 or better.
You’d have about a 36% chance to hit the flush and win the hand, with 2 to 1 pot odds you need to win 1 time in 3, that’s 33% so it is a green light. So we should call, as we make money long term even though we win the pot well under half the time.
However if we get only 1 to 1 odds, we will need to win 50% of the time. We only win ~36% of the time, therefore we can readily fold.
It’s important to remember, though, that pot odds are only perfect in call-or-fold spots when our calling ends the action in the hand, either because our opponent is allin or it’s on the river and our call or fold will end the hand.
18% equity) to continue, for example).
If you’ve grasped just about everything up to this point, you’ve already learned some important concepts from this article.
In the next free online poker lesson we’ll look at implied odds.
Or if you want to learn about that now and also check out how to calculate Outs get over to the NoPayPOKER.com poker free online training blog where all is revealed.