Poker
Odds
One of the biggest mistakes
that most players new to the game make is betting on
every hand they’re dealt, hoping it’ll get
better, or thinking it’s already better than what
their opponents are holding, but this isn’t always
the case. In fact, sometimes you’re better off
folding a hand that you think is terrific for the sake
of playing smart, for the sake of playing the odds.
What you should always be considering
while you’re playing a hand are the “outs,”
the cards that would help you make your best hand possible
-- how many of them have yet to be dealt, and how good
or bad your chances are of drawing them. I won’t
lie to you here, it does require doing a little bit
of math, but it’s nothing terrible. What you do
is take the number of out left to be seen and divide
them by the number of cards that haven’t been
seen yet. But remember! – these include the cards
that you WON’T see, too, such as your opponent’s
cards and the cards the Dealer has burned. This leaves
you with a percentage that you can use to gauge your
chances of being dealt the cards you need. If the percentage
is low enough, you should fold.
For example: say you were dealt
a 9 and a 10 off suit, and then a 6 and 7 came up on
the flop. To figure out your chances of drawing that
inside straight on the Turn or the River, you would
consider that you have four outs (there are four 8s
left unseen) and there are 47 cards left that they’re
in. Divide the outs by the remaining cards and that
leaves you with about an 8% chance of getting the card
you need. And if it doesn’t come up on the Turn,
that leaves 46 unseen cards, and now you have closer
to a 9% chance of drawing it.
Another example would be if you
were dealt two spades, for example, and two more spades
come up on the flop. This time you have 14 outs in the
deck somewhere. Dividing them by the 47 cards remaining
leaves you with about a 30% chance of drawing the flush.
Not too confusing, is it?
Pot odds are just as easy to work
out. Compare your outs -- your chances of winning the
hand -- with the amount of money in the pot. You can
work out the pot-to-bet ration like this: if the player
before you bets $20 into a $300 pot, and if you call
that bet, you have a chance of winning $320 dollars.
That’s a 1-16 pot ratio (the pot amount divided
by your call), and your chance of drawing that flush
is about 1-3. A one-in-three chance is much better than
a one-in-16, so calling on this bet would be a very
good idea.
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