Advanced Texas Holdem
Poker odds Theory.
By
Jennifer Schwechten
It is
rare to make your hand on the flop.
A much
more common scenario will find you in a draw
after the flop, and maybe even after the
turn. Therefore, it is necessary to have a strategy to help you
decide how to play your draw.
This is
where the importance of pot odds, implied
odds, reverse implied odds, and redraws
become clear.
Pot odds
are a measure of the amount of money in the
pot compared to the amount of money it will
cost you to continue playing your hand.
In other
words, how much money can you justify
betting on any particular hand given the
size of the pot.
In addition to current pot size, pot
odds take into account the probability that
you will hit your draw.
The assumption is that if you hit
your draw, you will win the hand and take
the full pot.
The
advantage of using pot odds is that it
forces you to evaluate not only the strength
of your hand, but also identify the maximum
“smart” bet for that hand.
To illustrate: consider the following
example.
Example:
Your hand:
The flop:
You have
four diamonds towards a flush and would only
need one more in order to make your flush
draw. This
means that you have a total of nine outs:
nine different ways to make your draw since
there are nine more diamonds unaccounted for
in the deck.
What are
the odds that you will hit your draw?
In this case 19.1% (9 diamonds left /
47 cards left).
You are pretty sure that if you hit
your draw, you will win the hand.
Therefore, you also have a 19.1%
chance of winning the pot.
Knowing this, you should be willing
to contribute up to 19.1% of the money in
the pot. Contributing any more than 19.1% would result in a net loss
of money in the long run, since you stand to
loss more money than you would be winning.
To
determine the pot odds, you would use the
following formula:
(pot +
bet) * (chance of hitting) >= bet
In the
above example, assume that the pot is $50
and it is your turn to call a $10 bet.
What should you do?
In this case, you should call.
A $10 bet is only is only 16.67% of
the total pot (current pot + your bet), less
than the 19.1% probability you will make
your flush draw and win the hand.
But what
if you make your flush draw only to find out
that you don’t have the best hand?
Consider
for example, the following opponent’s
hand:
Opponent A:
Your
opponent already has a four-of-a-kind.
This hand will beat you out
regardless of whether or not your make your
draw. So
in reality, you would have a 0% chance of
winning this hand even if you do beat the
odds to draw a flush.
By
contrast, what if you already have the best
hand and don’t need the draw to win?
In this case, you would have a 100%
chance of taking the pot.
The
disadvantage of pot odds is that it
doesn’t take into account the fact that
you may have already won the hand or that
you might lose the hand even if you make
your draw.
Pot odds is also limited in that it
doesn’t figure any betting in future
rounds into your decision making.
account
any future bets, such as bets made on the
turn and river. As
the hand progresses, more money will
invariably be added to the pot.
Exactly how much money will be added
cannot easily be determined with out a
crystal ball, yet the total pot value is
essential to determining accurate pot odds.
Implied odds is an improvement over
pure pot odds in that it is one step closer
to approximating the reality of the game.
calculate the odds that you may hit your
hand, in this case a flush draw, and lose
the pot anyway.
In
contrast to pot odds, there is no assumption
that you will automatically win if you hit
your draw. You must consider the probability
that you will lose the pot even if you hit
your draw, and must make an educated guess
about how much money you may lose on future
bets if that would happen.
Reverse
Implied odds and Redraws are the most
“accurate” way to calculate odds in that
they are the methods that take the most game
factors into account.
There
are also the most complicated to calculate
and still contain a large element of
guesswork since it is nearly impossible to
predict exactly how any poker hand will
unfold.
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