Calculating Pot odds/Hand odds for poker?

Question

Does anyone know a good way to practice the above? I'm not too good with math in my head, and I play for real money online at the .01/.02 cent stakes, but I'm not fast enough to figure my odds accurately on the fly with the time constraint that is often given. So can anyone suggest a good way to practice doing it?

Answer 1

As you mention, there isn't usually enough time online to calculate odds accurately (another reason why online poker isn't actually poker). There's also another issue--the answer to the calculation may be useless.

Consider--you decide to call a bet postflop that is 1/2 the size of the pot, because you perceive that the call will receive 3 to 1 odds, and your odds of hitting your hand are better than that. But YOU ONLY GET TO SEE THE TURN for that call--your pot odds go out the window when you miss on the turn, and your opponent, perceiving that you are on a draw, pushes all-in. You also have to factor in the possibility of making your hand, but losing anyway--and the loss will be bloody in that case (this is called "reverse implied odds").

The reverse of the above is called "implied odds", and refers to the additional amount you expect to win, over and above the xisting pot, if you hit your hand. Players tend to overestimate this--they will call a raise preflop with something like 55, hoping to hit a set on the flop, in which case, they fondly imagine, the preflop raiser will then give them his entire stack. It rarely works that way---in the above example, for instance, a flop that contains a 5 only has two other cards to help the preflop raiser, who may be on something like AQ. And if he had a pair, and he DID help, well, goodbye to YOUR stack (set over set). (This is the reverse implied odds thing again.)

So, while the calculation of odds can be important, the TRUE odds involved are calculated from many variables, and that complexity means that your brainpower during the hand might best be used some other way.

So if you want a simple rule of thumb, it could be--at NO LIMIT Hold Em, DRAWS SUCK, because you usually won't get the right odds. At LIMIT, the calculations become more important.

Answer 2

You could learn the rule of 2 and 4, which is a pretty good way to approximate the odds of hitting your hand.

Basically, this math allows you to get an idea in your head about the chance of hitting a drawing hand.

So let's say that you have AK of spades and the flop brings two spades.  There are 52 cards in the deck.  You've now seen 5 of them (your two cards and the flop).  There are nine more spades that you have not seen that could make your hand.  The odds of one coming out on the turn would be 9/47.  But if you're not good at math, that is not something you can do in your head.

But if you take your 'outs' (the cards that help your hand - in this case spades) and multiply by 4 you will have a good idea of your chance of hitting the hand.

So 9x4=36.  So the chance of hitting your flush draw is 36%.  If you are REALLY bad at math, you can just double the number twice.  So 9 doubled is 18 and 18 doubled is 36.

The actual math works out to be about 35%, but your approximation will give you enough idea to work on.

Once the turn is dealt, if you didn't hit, the second part of the rule kicks in.  This time you just multiply your outs by two, or double your outs.

So in this case, still nine outs, so you hit about 18% of the time.

What you need to do is get proficient about counting your outs, approximating your odds of hitting your drawing hand, and then later once you figure all that out, compare the odds of hitting your hand, to the odds the pot is offering you.

Answer 3

ZCT has a good answer, and gets another Thumbs UP! Most players use the 2-4 calculation that way.

Here is a link to a table that gives you pots odds for some common hands.

http://www.thedoverpro.com/poker-odds.ht...

As you can see the 2-4 rule works pretty well. And it is very simple and easy to do, lol.

Good luck at the tables!