Online Poker Tutorial: How to Use Pot Odds
No matter what online poker tips you have read, what poker play-style you adopt or what poker tournament you are in, pot odds are a fundamental skill that must be learnt prior to making a serious attempt at profiting from poker. Poker is a game of mathematics, a game where every decision should be based on fact. Many players believe in 'luck', they believe that a hand is either good or bad. Poker should be seen as a fluid, dynamic game - where other entities affect your chain of thought other than just the cards you hold in your hand.
'Luck' is a term coined for short term fluctuations in outcome, for example, Aces might get beaten by Kings - over several thousand hands Aces will always come out more successful, but looking at the one time Kings win can make it look like a 'lucky' hand. When calculating pot odds, it's important to realise all maths used are based on the outcome from an infinite amount of hands, so in the long term you know you will be successful - if you have the right pot odds.
Pot odds are calculated by finding the amount of 'outs' you have in a hand. An out is any card that could be dealt that would give you the winning hand. Obviously you have to make an assumption on what cards will give you the winning hand, for example, if you had Ace King and the flop showed 3 cards lower than King - you would assume that if any Ace or King comes on the turn you would have the winning hand. So in this situation you have 6 outs, the 3 remaining Kings in the pack and the 3 remaining Aces. That means you have a 6 in 47 chance of hitting one of these cards (you have 2 cards in your hand and there are 3 shown in the flop, so there are 52-5 cards left). To make the maths easier for you, round the 47 up to 50. You have a 6 in 50 chance to hit the winning hand, which as a percentage is 12% (double 6 to 12, and double 50 to make 100 (for percentage)). Note that this only shows the odds for the turn, the river will almost double your odds, so for both cards we will assume 20% of the time we will hit the winning hand.
If someone bets after the flop, and there's A�100 in the pot you use your pot odds (20%), to see how large a bet you can call. 20% of A�100 is A�20, therefore the largest bet you can call, for it to be a correct call, is A�20.
That is the basics of pot odds, a fundamental tip for online poker - which will help your decision making ability no end. There are certain other factors involved in decision making, such as implied odds which are for more advanced players, this will be covered in another article.
Using this online poker tip in a poker room, using a no deposit poker bonus, will allow you to practise pot odds with no cost to yourself - the best bit is that you could still win real money with no risk!
'Luck' is a term coined for short term fluctuations in outcome, for example, Aces might get beaten by Kings - over several thousand hands Aces will always come out more successful, but looking at the one time Kings win can make it look like a 'lucky' hand. When calculating pot odds, it's important to realise all maths used are based on the outcome from an infinite amount of hands, so in the long term you know you will be successful - if you have the right pot odds.
Pot odds are calculated by finding the amount of 'outs' you have in a hand. An out is any card that could be dealt that would give you the winning hand. Obviously you have to make an assumption on what cards will give you the winning hand, for example, if you had Ace King and the flop showed 3 cards lower than King - you would assume that if any Ace or King comes on the turn you would have the winning hand. So in this situation you have 6 outs, the 3 remaining Kings in the pack and the 3 remaining Aces. That means you have a 6 in 47 chance of hitting one of these cards (you have 2 cards in your hand and there are 3 shown in the flop, so there are 52-5 cards left). To make the maths easier for you, round the 47 up to 50. You have a 6 in 50 chance to hit the winning hand, which as a percentage is 12% (double 6 to 12, and double 50 to make 100 (for percentage)). Note that this only shows the odds for the turn, the river will almost double your odds, so for both cards we will assume 20% of the time we will hit the winning hand.
If someone bets after the flop, and there's A�100 in the pot you use your pot odds (20%), to see how large a bet you can call. 20% of A�100 is A�20, therefore the largest bet you can call, for it to be a correct call, is A�20.
That is the basics of pot odds, a fundamental tip for online poker - which will help your decision making ability no end. There are certain other factors involved in decision making, such as implied odds which are for more advanced players, this will be covered in another article.
Using this online poker tip in a poker room, using a no deposit poker bonus, will allow you to practise pot odds with no cost to yourself - the best bit is that you could still win real money with no risk!
0 comments