Online Poker Guide - Texas Holdem Strategies
Texas Holdem Strategies: Pot Odds
When we talk about pot odds in poker we are referring to the ratio of the current pot to the cost of making a call.
Knowing pot odds are essential to your poker armoury and even knowing some very basic odds will improve your game in the long run. Let’s take a look at an example of pot odds and if we should be calling bets to try and make our hand:
You’re playing an exciting Texas Holdem Poker cash game at 32Red Poker at $2/$4 No Limit. The pot stands at $200 after your opponent has bet $20 into a $180 pot on the flop. The action is on you and you must decide whether to make a call, fold or raise. To call will cost you $20. That would give you pot odds of 10:1 – which is considered very good odds for almost all hands and situations!
We usually only calculate pot odds when we have a drawing hand. Let’s assume we are in a heads-up situation with a hand such as a Jack and a Ten of hearts. A flop of Queen, King, Six with the King and Queen both heart cards, is on the board. That would give us a straight draw, a flush draw and a straight flush draw. There are a lot of cards left in the deck that we can hit to make our hand:
Any Nine that is not a heart – 3 cards (to make a straight 9 – K)
Any Ace that is not a heart – 3 cards (to make a straight T – A)
Any heart – 9 cards (to make a flush)
That leaves us with a total of 15 cards that we can hit to make our hand, but what pot odds should we be looking for? Well, we know there are 52 cards in a deck. 3 are on the table, 2 are in our hand and 2 in our opponent’s hand. That leaves 45 cards remaining in the deck.
45 cards / 15 outs = 3:1
With those pot odds it would be +EV (we will discuss EV in a later article) to call any flop bet of $66.66 or less assuming a pot total of $200. Bets over that amount would be –EV to call in the long run.
Back to Texas Holdem Strategies.
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Online Poker Guide: Pot Odds
In summary: Pot odds is chance of acquiring the card(s) needed to form the desired (hopefully winning) poker hand. Dividing the number of cards that will complete your hand by the number of cards in a deck (52) - cards on the table and in your hand will find you the pot odds for that hand.
Knowing the pot odds alone will not guarantee you to become a poker pro alone, you'll need to combine a range of skills and put them to practice at the on and offline tables. Start now, by joining 32Red Poker.
