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Pot Odds

Youll see pot odds mentioned on every poker resource you look at for advice. You cant avoid them. Pot odds are invaluable to success at poker, and thats why weve included this crucial section.

Once you hit the flop, you should use pot odds to determine your next action. By the time the flop is dealt, youll be in one of two categories: youll either be winning (with a made hand), or youll want to improve your hand (drawing, or going for better cards). If you have a made hand, you should bet and raise. Dont worry about pot odds yet. Youll want to win the pot now because more cards can only help your opposition. An example of a made hand would be an ace and a king, with the board showing a king, jack and 4.

If you dont have a made hand, youll be drawing. This is when pot odds come into playwhen its time to decide whether to call or fold. First, you must count the number of outs you have. Outs, if you remember, are cards that will make your hand the best hand. For example, if you have a king and a jack, and the board shows a queen, 10 and 7, your outs are four aces and four 9s. Thats eight outs total. Calculate your percentage chance of hitting an out by taking the number of outs times two, then adding two. Once youve got this number (in our example, that number is 18%), multiply it by the value of the pot to see the value of the maximum bet that you can call. Imagine that the pot in our example was $200. Eighteen percent of $200 is $36, so you should call any bet thats less than or equal to $36.

Once again, the formula for calculating pot odds is:

(# of outs) x (2) + (2) = APPROXIMATE PERCENTAGE OF HITTING.

Then

(Pot total) x (Percentage of hitting an out) = YOUR BETTING LIMIT.

And please, please, PLEASE remember to convert your percentage to a decimal before multiplying it with the total of the pot. Your math teacher would never forgive you, and your betting limit would be dangerously high! In the meantime, lets look at an extended example of pot odds from a real poker situation:

Example #1

Youre playing at a table with $5 and $10 limits, respectively, and the pot is $200. After the turn, the boardthe cards that are face up on the tableshows 2, 5, 9 and queen.

Imagine that youve got a pocket hand of jack and 10. That means that all you need from the river is an 8 or a king, and youll be able to complete a straight. Your opponent bets $10. Youre deciding whether or not to call your opponents bet. This is where your pot odds become important. First, however, youll want to calculate your chances of just winning the bet.

Bearing in mind how to calculate your outs, well put 8 in the numerator position, since there are four 8s and four kings that havent been revealed yet. The denominator, meanwhile, will be 46, since weve already finished the turn and the board has four cards. Dividing 8 by 46 gives you about a 17.4% chance of completing the straight and winning the bet.

Now lets think about that pot of $200. Since your opponent is betting $10, and you stand to win as much as $200, thats a potential profit of 20 times the bet; or, looking at it from an odds perspective, the bet is 1/20th of the pot. If you compare your 17.4% chance of winning the bet with the big difference between the bet and the pot (the bet is only 5% of the pot), your pot odds tell you that it might be a good idea to go for it.

This example demonstrates that pot odds are just a comparison between risk and profit. Nothing is risk-free, as all gamblers know, but pot odds are an important way of gauging when is a good time to take that risk. Its crucial to have that kind of perspective in Texas Hold Em Poker.

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