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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.

Poker odds can be described as the probability that you can expect to win or lose, or the price on offer. It can also specify how often you need to have the best hand to call a bet. Every bet, raise, or call, that you make in no limit texas hold'em has its own odds. Poker odds are the most basic probability tool at a player’s disposal. Dec 29, 2008  Pot odds refers to the relationship between the size of the pot and the size of the bet. For example: If there's $10 in the pot and you have to call a $2 bet, then you are getting pot odds of 5-1. If you have to call a $5 bet in the same $10 pot, you're getting pot odds of 2-1. Dec 26, 2013  The amount for me to call is 300. In order to figure out our pot odds, what we're doing is we're taking the call amount to use and seeing how many times that. If you're going to call, you need a pocket that plays well against this type of hand. Aces with medium or low kickers are not advisable, because you are likely going up against an ace with a much.

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.

Unfortunately, some cool cat has made a bet, putting you in a tricky situation where you have to decide whether or not it is in your best interest to call to try and make the flush, or fold and save your money.

This is a prime example of where you are going to take advantage of 'pot odds' to work out whether or not it is worth making the call.

What are pot odds? What about flushes and straights?

Basically, just forget about the name if you haven't heard about it before, there's no need to let it throw you off. Just think of 'pot odds' as the method for finding out whether chasing after a draw (like a flush or straight) is going to be profitable. If you're on your toes, you might have already been able to guess that it is generally better to chase after a draw when the bet is small rather than large, but we'll get to that in a minute..

Pot odds will tell you whether or not to call certain sized bets to try and complete your flush or straight draw.

Why use pot odds?

Because it makes you money, of course.

If you always know whether the best option is to fold or call when you're stuck with a hand like a flush draw, you are going to be saving (and winning) yourself money in the long run. On top of that, pot odds are pretty simple to work out when you get the hang of it, so it will only take a split second to work out if you should call or fold the next time you're in a sticky drawing situation. How nice is that?

Poker Percentages And Odds

How to work out whether or not to call with a flush or straight draw.

Now, this is the meat of the article. But trust me on this one, the 'working-out' part is not as difficult as you might think, so give me a chance to explain it to you before you decide to knock it on the head. So here we go..

Essentially, there are two quick and easy parts to working out pot odds. The first is to work out how likely it is that you will make your flush or straight (or whatever the hell you are chasing after), and the second is to compare the size of the bet that you are facing with the size of the pot. Then we use a little bit of mathematical magic to figure out if we should make the call.

1] Find out how likely it is to complete your draw (e.g. completing a flush draw).

All we have to do for this part is work out how many cards we have not seen, and then figure out how many of these unknown cards could make our draw and how many could not.

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We can then put these numbers together to get a pretty useful ratio. So, for example, if we have a diamond flush draw on the flop we can work out..

The maths.

There are 47 cards that we do not know about (52 minus the 2 cards we have and minus the 3 cards on the flop).

• 9 of these unknown cards could complete our flush (13 diamonds in total minus 2 diamonds in our hand and the 2 diamonds on the flop).
• The other 38 cards will not complete our flush (47 unknown cards, minus the helpful 9 cards results in 38 useless ones).
• This gives us a ratio of 38:9, or scaled down.. roughly 4:1.

So, at the end of all that nonsense we came out with a ratio of 4:1. This result is a pretty cool ratio, as it tells us that for every 4 times we get a useless card and miss our draw, 1 time will we get a useful card (a diamond) and complete our flush. Now all we need to do is put this figure to good use by comparing it to a similar ratio regarding the size of the bet that we are facing.

After you get your head around working out how many cards will help you and how many won't, the only tricky part is shortening a ratio like 38:9 down to something more manageable like 4:1. However, after you get used to pot odds you will just remember that things like flush draws are around 4:1 odds. To be honest, you won't even need to do this step the majority of the time, because there are very few ratios that you need to remember, so you can pick them off the top of your head and move on to step 2.

2] Compare the size of the bet to the size of the pot.

The title pretty much says it all here. Use your skills from the last step to work out a ratio for the size of the bet in comparison to the size of the pot. Just put the total pot size (our opponent's bet + the original pot) first in the ratio, and the bet size second. Here are a few quick examples for you..

• $20 bet into a $100 pot = 120:20 = 6:1
• $0.25 bet creating a total pot size of $1 = 1:0.25 = 4:1
• $40 bet creating a total pot size of $100 = 100:40 = 2.5:1

That should be enough to give you an idea of how to do the second step. In the interest of this example, I am going to say that our opponent (with a $200 stack) has bet $20 in to a $80 pot, giving us odds of 5:1 ($100:$20). This is going to come in very handy in the next step.

This odds calculation step is very simple, and the only tricky part is getting the big ratios down into more manageable ones. However, this gets a lot easier after a bit of practice, so there's no need to give up just yet if you're not fluent when it comes to working with ratios after the first 5 seconds. Give yourself a chance!

To speed up your pot odds calculations during play, try using the handy (and free) SPOC program.

3] Compare these two ratios.

Now then, we know how likely it is that we are going to complete our draw, and we have worked out our odds from the pot (pot odds, get it? It's just like magic I know.). All we have to do now is put these two ratios side to side and compare them..

• 5:1 pot odds
• 4:1 odds of completing our draw on the next card

The pot odds in this case are bigger than the odds of completing our draw, which means that we will be making more money in the long run for every time we hit according to these odds. Therefore we should CALL because we will win enough to make up for the times that we miss and lose our money.

If that doesn't make total sense, then just stick to these hard and fast rules if it makes things easier:

If your pot odds are bigger than your chances of hitting - CALL
If your pot odds are smaller than your chances of hitting - FOLD

So just think of bigger being better when it comes to pot odds. Furthermore, if you can remember back to the start of the article when we had the idea that calling smaller bets is better, you will be able to work out that small bets give you bigger pot odds - makes sense right? It really comes together quite beautifully after you get your head around it.

What if there are two cards to come?

In this article I have shown you how to work out pot odds for the next card only. However, when you are on the flop there are actually 2 cards to come, so shouldn't you work out the odds for improving to make the best hand over the next 2 cards instead of 1?

No, actually.

Even if there are 2 cards to come (i.e. you're on the flop), you should still only work out the odds of improving your hand for the next card only.

The reason for this is that if you work using odds for improving over two cards, you need to assume that you won't be paying any more money on the turn to see the river. Seeing as you cannot be sure of this (it's quite unlikely in most cases), you should work out your pot odds for the turn and river individually. This will save you from paying more money than you should to complete your draw.

I discuss this important principle in a little more detail on my page about the rule of 2 and 4 for pot odds. It's also one of the mistakes poker players make when using odds.

Note: The only time you use odds for 2 cards to come combined is when your opponent in all-in on the flop. In almost every other case, you take it one card at a time.

Playing flush and straight draws overview.

I really tried hard to keep this article as short as possible, but then again I didn't want to make it vague and hazy so that you had no idea about what was going on. I'm hoping that after your first read-through that you will have a rough idea about how to work out when you should call or fold when on a flush or straight draw, but I am sure that it will take you another look over or two before it really starts to sink in. So I advise that you read over it again at least once.

The best way to get to grips with pot odds is to actually start working them out for yourself and trying them out in an actual game. It is all well and good reading about it and thinking that you know how to use them, but the true knowledge of pot odds comes from getting your hands dirty and putting your mind to work at the poker tables.

It honestly isn't that tough to use pot odds in your game, as it will take less than a session or two before you can use them comfortably during play. So trust me on this one, it is going to be well worth your while to spend a little time learning how to use pot odds, in return for always knowing whether to call or fold when you are on a draw. It will take a load off your mind and put more money in your pocket.

To help you out when it comes to your calculations, take a look at the article on simple pot odds. It should make it all a lot less daunting.

Go back to the sublime Texas Hold'em guide.

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When it comes to drawing in community card games, the key things to keep track of are the pot odds, and the hero's equity in the pot. Lets define these two terms further.

Pot Odds

In poker games, pot odds are the ratio of the current size of the pot to the cost of the contemplated call. The ratio that you receive once you do this simple division problem is very useful to other things. One example is, figuring out if you are getting the right price on future calls and if your play is +Expected Value or -Expected Value.

Finding our pot odds:

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This is the simple one, so lets knock it out first.

When you are facing a raise on any street; take all the money that is currently in the pot, and add to that the bet you are facing, then divide this total by the bet you are facing. These are your immediate pot odds.

Total pot + your potential call of villains' bet

---------------

villain's bet

=

pot odds

Quick example of pot odds:

Pot of 20$ on the turn, the villain bets 5$. What are your pot odds?

Solution;

25$ (adding villains' 5$ bet since he cannot take that bet back) + 5$ (your potential call)

---------------------------------

5$ (your potential call)

Basic Poker Odds

=

6-1 or 16.7% are your direct pot odds here.

Simple, huh? Now, lets move on.

Finding our equity

This one is a bit tougher, so follow along! To find our equity in the pot at any given part of the hand we need to know two things.

• a. We need to know our hand. (Easy!)
• b.We need to know villain's exact hand(Eeek). Or their range of hands. (Oh lord)

Sounds like a truckload of work! But you're in luck! In PLO people tend to nut peddle, so if you put villain on the nuts when they're mashing the pot button, you're probably not too far off!

I suggest starting with this approach and once you get better at putting villain on medium strength, and weak hands you can assign him an accurate range.

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Example

But lets start by putting villains who are potting it on hands they probably have! (The nuts.) Below is an example from my training video short of a real hand that happened at PLO100.

We are on the button with jj89. Three handed to the flop, 10usd in the middle, we have the pre flop aggression.

Playing against two villains on a tjq flop. We have both villains covered.

The BB leads pot right into us. Without going too much into it we can assume he has AxKxXxXx no re draw.

Poker Hands Odds Of Winning

Now that we know his exact hand and our exact hand we can figure out our pot equity!

Calculating our pot equity

We need to plug these numbers into a pot limit omaha equity calculator. I recommend using the best free one at; http://www.propokertools.com/simulations

Plugging our numbers into the calculator, we find out that our hand has 36.71% equity and he has 63.29% equity in the pot.

This is the part of the pot that rightfully belongs to us/him according to the strength of the hand. It is also how often we will win this pot. This is the part of the game where math becomes important and brushing up on the maths will yield results.

Putting it in to practice

One way I recommend practicing is to have one table up and go over spots you thought were close. These close spots you can mark down with an asterisk so you can go back to them after the session or during a break when you sit out. I sometimes do this in live plo games as well, if i thought the spot was super interesting or close, I just go to the coach and take a break and go over the spot with a calculator.

For more in depth examples of this process please check out my video on PLO drawing. I put theory into practice and go over my methodology during a live one table session.

Poker Odds To Call

Make sure to check our Omaha Poker Rules page and First time Strategy Tips. Enjoy.