Poker Free Online Games Quick Guide To Pot Odds And How To Use Simple Mth To Calculate Them At High Speed
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!
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.
2 Core Concepts
The two most basic math concepts in poker are calculating your outs (and consequently your percentage chance of hitting one of them), and calculating pot odds.
I am looking at Pot Odds here. In the previous article we did Outs. See the link at the bottom of this page to find the last article.
If you don’t understand pot odds then you can have no clue if a call will be profitable, this is especially critical in postflop spots and allin’s.
Let’s say we’re HU and each player has 10bb stacks.
> Player 1 goes allin preflop. Player 2 has to decide whether 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 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). 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. So when short stacked this is why it’s right to move all in 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 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’ve grasped all things up to this point, well done, you’re on your way in poker math..
The next free poker online lesson is going to be on Implied Odds.
Alternatively you can go and check out my much longer full lesson on poker math with Calculating Outs, implied odds, reverse implied odds and more at the NoPayPOKER.com free online poker training blog where you will discover all and get a link to a helpful pro if you’re stuck.