Learning Pot Odds

Learning pot odds is probably one of the things that caused the biggest jump in the quality of my poker play. You can pick up little tips here and there but few of them will lead to as immediate results as learning pot odds. This is something that I know almost every hand I enter and it is very much like second nature to me now. It didnít start off this way. I will admit that I was definitely intimidated by this concept when I first encountered it, as I think a lot of players are. It really shouldnít be this way though. After a week or two of working with pot odds you should be figuring it out without giving it much thought. In this article I will go over the basic premises of pot odds and when you should use them to help you make decisions at the poker table.

Pot odds are a tool that you can use at the poker table to help you make solid, logical playing decisions. This helps you negate the element of luck that is inherent to any form of gambling. Usually, pot odds are used to help you make decisions pertaining to drawing hands. Without pot odds, you really have nothing logical to base your decision on. This means that you are making moves at the poker table without solid reasoning behind them. This is where you lose money.

To figure out pot odds you first have to figure out the value of your hand. This is done by first calculating the number of outs that you have. Your outs are the cards left in the deck that could make you hand. For example, if you're on a open ended strait draw, that means there are eight cards potentially left in the deck that could make you strait. This means you have eight outs. You then compare this number to all the unknown cards that can potentially be in the deck. For instance, if you're looking for this card on the river then there will 46 cards left in the deck. This is because you have two known cards in your hand and four known cards on the board. 52-6=46. This means that the odds of hitting your hand are at 46:8 or 5.75:1.

You can then use this ratio to calculate your pot odds. Essentially, you are going to want there to be 5.75 times your bet in the pot already for it to make logical sense for you to stay in the hand. So if there was a 100 dollars in the pot and it was 25 dollars to call, you would probably want to fold since there is only four times you bet amount in the pot.