Poker Free Online Games Quick Guide To Pot Odds And How You Use Simple Poker Math To Figure Them Out At High Speed
In this free online poker 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 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.
Say you are Heads Up and each of you has 10BB stacks.
> Player 1 goes allin 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 is generally expressed as a ratio, the size of the pot to the size of the call needed. In this instance, the pot odds would be 11:9 (11 to 9). Or made more simple approx. 1.2 to 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.
Getting 2 to 1, a player needs to win only 33% of the time to break even calling (1 win for every 2 losses, or 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. This is tricky, and requires lots 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? 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.
If we’re getting 1 to 1 odds, though, we need to win half the time. We just win ~36% of the time, therefore we can readily 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, you’ve already learned some important concepts from this article.
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.
Related posts:
- Poker Free Online Games Swift Quick Guide To How To Use Pot Odds And How You Use Simple Poker Math To Figure Them Out At High Speed
- Free Poker Online Games Quick Guide To What Outs Are And How You Use Simple Poker Math To Calculate Them At Light Speed
- Free Poker Online Games Basic Guide To Implied Odds And Pot Odds
- Online Poker Games Free Guide To The Dangers Of The Minimum Raise
- Poker Online Free Games Guide To Why Stack Size Matters So Much
- Poker Free Online Games Easy How To Poker Bet Guide
- Free Online Poker Games Basic Patience On Steroids Guide To How To Be Good At Poker
- Free Poker Lessons Online Guide On Playable Pocket Cards And Table Position
- Free Poker Online Games Education Guide To Why You Will Fail If You Fail To Plan
- Free Online Poker Lesson On How To Counter Loose Aggressive Poker Players
