Jul 10
23
The Importance Of Pot Odds in Texas Holdem Pot odds are an intricate part of poker, whether it may be Texas Hold’em or any other poker variant, and the importance of knowing what it is and how to use it can’t be stressed enough. Simply put, pot odds lets you know if it is worth continue with a drawing hand in a pot, or not. So using pot odds should be a part of your Texas holdem strategy. Or you will end up paying more for draws than you can win and thus lose money in the long run. In this article we will exclusively deal with Texas Holdem odds. Basically it’s the relationship between the size of the pot, the number of winning cards (outs) you have and the cost to call. What you do is that you calculate the ratio between the size of the pot and the cost to call and compare that to the ratio of winning and loosing cards. For instance: lets say that there is $100 in the pot and you have a flush draw and it costs you $40 to call and see the turn. First you have to see how many outs you have. With two hearts on the board and two in your hand, you have a total of four hearts that are visible which means that there are 9 (13-4) hearts left in the card deck so you have 9 outs then. What you do next is that you take the number of cards left in the deck (47, this is the number of unseen cards and should contain all the cards that you haven’t seen, including cards that are dealt to others and burn cards) and subtract the number of outs you have 47-9= 36, and thus the ratio for losing versus winning cards are 36:9 which equals to 4:1 (there are 36 cards that can come that doesn’t give you the flush and 9 that does.) Next you calculate the ratio between the cost of calling (40) and the pot size (100) in the same way, 100:40 which equals 2.5:1. Finally you compare these numbers 4:1 and 2.5:1 and if the cost ratio of calling is higher than the number of outs ratio you call. In our example the ratio is lower and thus you shouldn’t call. To be economically viable the cost ratio should have at least been the same as the outs ratio. If you need to calculate the odds for both turn and river cards (if for instance your opponent went allin with that $40 bet and you get to see both the turn and the river card for a total of $40) you simply add the number of outs for the turn and the river. Applied to the example above it would look like this (36:9 + 35:9 = 71:18, which roughly is 4:2). As you can see you unfortunately still don’t have the correct odds to call. Pot odds are very important, especially in fixed limit where every bet won or lost makes a big difference in your earnings.
