Poker Free Online Games Fact Guide On Pot Odds And How To Use Simple Poker Math To Calculate Them At High Speed
February 14th, 2012In this poker free online games article we look at poker math and how you can use it when playing the new young aggressive style of play known to many as school 3 poker or more up to date school 2.
Some people may be surprised that poker is a math-based game.
Happily, for most people, poker math is not tricky once learned and there are some easy tricks that you can use to help you nail it.
Two Primary 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. In the previous article we did Outs. 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).
Let’s say we’re HU and each player has 10bb stacks.
> Player 1 moves all in preflop. Player 2 must now decide to fold or call.
> This situation means that the pot is 11bb - the 10bb from player 1 plus 1bb put up by player 2, player 2 must decide to fold or to call 9bb for the chance to win 11bb.
This set up is normally expressed as a ratio, the size of the pot versus the call size needed. In this instance, the pot odds would be 11:9 (11 to 9). Simplified, this is approximately 1.2:1.
What that means in money terms is that to make a call profitable player 2 must win 1 time for every 1.2 losing times, so a win every 2.2 pots.
When a player gets 1 to 1 it means they must win the pot in 50% of hands just to break even when calling. They’re profitable if they win any more 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. This is tricky, and requires lots of practice.
When you get a fold or call decision, it boils down to estimating your Outs versus the opponents range - count then and use the 2 and 4% rule and then compare to your pot odds. Not sure about Outs? See the full version of this article on NoPay, link at the bottom of the 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 call, long term we will make money despite the fact that we win the pot a lot less than half the time.
However if we get only 1 to 1 odds, we will need to win 50% of the time. We just win ~36% of the time, therefore we can easily fold.
Keep in mind that pot odds are only ideal in call or fold decisions where calling ends the hand action due to the opponent being all in or we are at the river and the call or fold ends the hand.
If there is action yet to come (we are at the flop or Turn) then pot odds are not perfect, though it is unlikely that it will be a mistake to fold or call if the odds are heavily in favour.
If you have grasped everything up to this stage, well done, you’re on your way in poker math..
The next free poker online lesson is going to be on 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.












