Calculate Your Way To Victory

What Are Pot Odds?
How To Calculate Them?

So you are a Beginning player and want to learn something more about your odds? Well, let us congratulate you on making the smartest decision you made in your poker playing days.

That's so because most of the amateur players completely neglect the importance of knowing how to act accordingly to the pot size. It is this that will separate you from the rest, making you a total winner but only if you begin to implement the strategy as soon as you've read this.

Pot – the total amount of money that is at the center of the table, consisting in all the bets made during the current betting round (including the Big and Small Blinds).

Outs – the number of cards that are currently in the deck (including the other players cards, because you have no way of knowing what they are) that can give you the winning hand.

Lets Look At The Example Below:

Your Hole Cards Are:

The Flop Comes Up:

So how many outs do you have now?

Well if you hit either a queen or a Jack you would have a top pair, also if you hit a King or an 8 you would make it a straight and that could easily make the winning hand.

Lets add them together – 4 Kings + 4 Eights + 3 Queens + 3 Jacks that sums up to a total of 14 outs. So after considering that you have 47 cards left in the deck that makes your chances of getting your winning hand about 3.4 – 1.

We found that by dividing the total number of cards in the deck with the number of outs you've got. Or 47/14 = approximately 3.4, if you are not good at mathematics that's OK, just think of how many times does the number 14 fit in 47. Also during a game you wouldn't be able to calculate your odds on a piece of paper so get used to making the calculations in your mind only.

What does the odd 3.4:1 tell us? It tells us that in this situation we should only call or bet if the pot size is 3.4 times bigger than the bet or call we are making.

So if you are playing 1$/2$ limit Hold'em, the pot is 9$ and the amount you have to call is 1$ that makes it 9$:1$ in favor of the pot size so you should probably call or even raise.

OK so you've just called:

The Turn Brings:

What just happened is that you got also a queen high flush draw with that 3 of Diamonds which increased the number of the outs you got. Lets add them up again.

4 Kings + 4 Eights + 3 Queens + 3 Jacks + 7 Diamonds for a flush (exluding the King and Eight Of Diamonds because they have already been added) = 21 outs. That makes your chances 2.2 – 1 which means that you can call or bet as long as the pot size is more than 2.2 times the size of the call or bet you make.

By now you may be asking yourself the question 'Why should I consider the pot size when I make a bet?'. This is done with the purpose to maximize your wins and minimize your losses. See, the riskier the bet or call you make, the bigger the reward should be when you hit a winning hand in order to make up for the times when you don't.

There is much logic in this. If your winning odds are, say – 10:1 and you call a 4$ bet when the pot is 20$, that bet is just one fifth of the pot size, or 5:1 considering that your chances to win are 10:1. There is too much to lose opposed to the reward and winning chances. In this case you should most probably fold.

Remember, the golden rule is – the smaller your number of outs is, the bigger should the pot size be in order for you to participate in the hand.