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- What are Pot Odds in Poker?
- How to Calculate Pot Odds for Any Bet
- Step 1 – Calculate the Pot Size
- Step 2 – Find the Bet to Pot Ratio
- Step 3 – Calculate the Percentage
- Step 4 – Estimate Your Equity
- A Quick Way to Determine Pot Odds
- A Brief Introduction to Reverse Implied Odds
- How to Avoid a Dominated Hand?
- HisHands – a Service worth Your Attention
- Conclusion
Poker is a game of mathematics, no matter what others may tell you, pot odds in poker are one of the most important concepts in the game. Many poker players learn how to calculate their pot odds early in their careers, but often forget about pot odds and how they affect the decisions they make. In this guide, we’ll focus specifically on pot odds and cover how to calculate them, when to use them, and how they can improve your game. However, before we get into the math and examples, let’s first understand what pot odds are.
What are Pot Odds in Poker?
Let’s say you’ve learned how to calculate your equity and even know your chances of making a flush or straight, but there’s still one important element that you don’t understand yet.
That element is the pot odds, which will be the deciding factor of when to call. In simple terms, pot odds in poker are the ratio of the size of the pot to the bet your opponent makes.
This ratio is the most important thing you need to consider before deciding whether to call. For example, imagine you’re playing a low stakes cash game at your local casino. There is $30 in the pot, and one of the players bets $15, a standard “half-pot” bet.
Many players don’t ask themselves what this bet means to them and whether it’s mathematically worth calling. The first thing to understand is the pot odds, which in this case are 3:1. With $30 in the pot and your opponent betting $15, the total pot is now $45.
You would have to call $15 to win a $60 pot, meaning you would have to win the hand one time out of four to break even. Comparing these numbers to the number of outs you have will give you a good idea of where you stand in the hand.
Now, let’s dive a little deeper into how to calculate poker pot odds for other bet sizes.
How to Calculate Pot Odds for Any Bet
There are plenty of poker odds calculators out there, but calculating pot odds at the table is fairly simple, and professional poker players can do it without much effort most of the time.
We’re just getting started with all this, though, so let’s take a look at how to calculate pot odds.
Step 1 – Calculate the Pot Size
The first step in calculating pot odds is to determine the size of the pot. This may seem simple, but players often forget to add their call to the total pot size.
The pot calculation should look like this:
Current pot + bet size + your call = pot size
After you add these three values together, you get your total pot size. In our example, the calculation would be:
$30 + $15 + $15 = $60
Step 2 – Find the Bet to Pot Ratio
The next step in calculating pot odds is also quite simple. You need to divide your bet size by the total pot size.
In our example, it would be:
$15 (bet size) / $60 (total pot) = 0.25
Step 3 – Calculate the Percentage
The next step is even simpler. Multiply this ratio by 100 and you will get your percentage.
In our example, it would be:
0.25 × 100 = 25%
This number tells you how much equity (probability of winning) you need to have to justify calling. In our example, to break even or make a profit, you need at least 25% equity against your opponent’s range of hands.
Step 4 – Estimate Your Equity
This step is the trickiest, but crucial part. Once you know how much equity you need for a call, you need to estimate whether you have that much equity against your opponent’s range.
Our poker pot odds examples show that if you have a naked flush draw, you have about 35% equity against a made hand like an overpair. Calling is even easier if you have a flush draw with two overcards, and so on.
Things get more complicated if you have a made hand like a second pair or bottom pair, as the equity calculations become more complex.
A Quick Way to Determine Pot Odds
As you can see, calculating pot odds isn’t the hardest task. It just requires a little math skills. However, doing the math at the table can be awkward and time-consuming, so it’s helpful to memorize basic pot odds.
Since most players bet around a certain percentage of the pot, here’s a quick cheat sheet that will tell you the pot odds for the most common bet sizes:
| Bet size | Equity required to call |
| 25% Pot | 16% |
| 50% Pot | 25% |
| 75% Pot | 30% |
| Full Pot | 33% |
| 1.5x Pot | 37,5% |
| 2x Pot | 40% |
So, it only takes 40% equity to call a 2x pot bet, meaning you’ll probably fold too much against smaller bets. However, keep in mind that you may see additional bets on subsequent streets, so you shouldn’t always count on realizing all of your equity in these situations.
On the other hand, it’s worth noting that implied odds can also play a role in your decision making, as you can make more money if you get one of the cards that improves your hand.
A Brief Introduction to Reverse Implied Odds
Having learned how to do the correct analysis of reverse implied odds, playing poker will become 100% more profitable. Pot odds are responsible for calculating your profit from continuing the hand, while reverse implied odds are responsible for determining the loss that you can suffer from times when your opponent’s hand improves.
After a call or raise on the flop, there will be a turn and a river, where the opponent may get a stronger combination. Implied and reverse implied odds will help to assess your position in this case.
When a player has a drawing hand, it is possible that the existing odds will not be enough for a profitable call.
At the same time, the implied odds of future streets can turn your unprofitable draw into a profitable one. Based on the name, it is easy to guess that reverse implied odds work exactly the opposite. Let’s say you have a strong hand, but not the nuts. You don’t have much chance to improve when your opponent’s hand either beats you or has enough chances to improve by the river. Thus, reverse implied odds promise you a losing play in the long run.
How to Avoid a Dominated Hand?
If implied odds promise you profit, then reverse implied odds will hurt you with hands that dominate you. A marginal hand on the flop may seem strong. However, this overestimation can cost you big losses in the long run.
Imagine that you have KQ preflop. Effective stack is $100. An aggressive opponent raises $4 from the button, and you decide to call from the BB. The flop is K-4-3, which is good for you. You check, and then your opponent bets $7. Without thinking twice, you call.
At this point, you have a fairly strong hand. Implied odds tell you that calling will be profitable in the long run. However, this is only true in a situation where after a bet of $7 there would be no further action. But the hand does not stop there. The turn is a 5.
The opponent bets $10, you call. You justify the correctness of your actions by the fact that you are quite often ahead with a top pair, which is true. The river is another 5, after which the opponent bets $20, and you call again. You believe that the pot odds are already too attractive for you and you cannot refuse a showdown.
The above example clearly shows that getting into a situation with reverse implied odds is bad for your bankroll. However, it is simply impossible to avoid them completely. All you can do is learn to recognize such situations in time and not play big pots in them. Folding your cards can save you a lot of money when you win on the rare occasions. Start looking for these moments in your game and simply avoid them when you have a good hand, but villain can have something stronger or has a decent chance of improving.
HisHands – a Service worth Your Attention
Before we move on to the conclusion, it is worth noting that HisHands service can significantly improve your poker skills, especially when calculating pot odds and equity. Using the hand histories from HisHands, you get access to detailed statistics about your opponents’ actions, which allows you to accurately assess their strategy. This is especially useful when analyzing opponents’ bets, as you can determine how often they bet in different situations, which helps you more accurately calculate your chances of winning depending on their hand range.
In addition, HisHands helps you analyze not only past hands, but also the behavior of your opponents in the long term. Such information allows you to build more competent tactics and make more informed decisions. Knowing how your opponents play in certain situations gives you an advantage when calculating equity and allows you to make optimal decisions, which significantly increases your chances of success at the online tables. All you have to do is contact HisHands managers on Telegram or Skype to calculate your price and buy ready-made hand histories.
Conclusion
Pot odds are one of the most important mathematical concepts in poker, and fortunately, they are quite easy to master. Using the simple formula, you learned today, you would be able to calculate pot odds and the required equity to call in any situation.
However, remember that simply knowing pot odds will not always be enough, since you also need to learn how to evaluate equity against your opponent’s range of hands, but that is a topic for another lesson.
For now, try calculating simple pot odds in poker and review a few hands you have played. Find moments when you should have called or folded according to the pot odds, but for some reason you chose the other way. This will help you understand and reflect on your game.
