When to call using pot odds and odds of making my hand in nolimit poker?

Question

do i call a bet when my pot odds are better than the odds of making my hand or the other way around?

example pot odds making hand odds

6-1 3-1

3-1 6-1

which example would i call and which would i fold? please explain

Answer 1

Ok dude, lets take an example. Your on a flush draw and the blinds are 10-20. If a guy raises to 60 and you call from the big blind. The pot total is 130. The flop brings you a flush draw and besides that, lets say that any pair will be useless because he might have a higher pair. If he bets 100 into the 130 pot, you have to call 100 to earn 230 which is about 2.3 to one. To make a flush, you then have 9 outs of the 47 cards you haven't seen. Thats about one fifth. Even though you make a flush 1/3 of the time. You have to consider implied odds where he can bet on the turn. Lets say instead he bet 70 dollars instead. Here you call 70 to win 200. about 2.8 to one. much better pot odds. You must always call if your pot odds are higher then the odds of making your hand. If he is laying you 3-1 and it takes 2-1 to make your flush. YOU MUST CALL!!!!

Answer 2

if i assume that he has me beat, im guessing im in an 80-20 situation, i will win 1 in every 5 times we play this hand out....

so, now i look at what the bet is to me and how much in the pot, lets say there is now 1000 in the pot and the bet to me is only 100, I would risk 100 to win a 1000 and i will win 1 in 5 times, right?

Thats 10-1 on your money, YOU MUST CALL

you will lose sometimes, but by playing smart like this, you will have more money by winning just the 1 in 5 times!

Answer 3

You want your pot odds to be higher than the odds of making your hand.  So 6-1 pot odds and 3:1 hand odds would be good and the other example bad :)  You also have to keep in mind that you want to be fairly sure that your hand will win in order to use this.  Technically we'd take the percentage of the hand winning if hit and multiply by that - for instance if it's 75% then you'd need to multiply the 6 by that and get 4.5.  Not to make this more complicated for you but as you go there's a bunch of other considerations like for instance what's going to happen later on as this is just a snapshot of the hand.  However don't worry about that too much and it's good that you're learning a bit here to start.

King Cobra Poker

http://kingcobrapoker.com/lessons.html

Answer 4

If you bet on a number on the roll of a die (a 5-1 shot) would you be happy if the payout was 3-1?

If the payout will be higher than the odds of making your hand, that is when you consider gambling.