Pot odds - What are the odds?

Poker is played, always, with 52 cards. This means that its parameters are defined. You will always know the chance of a particular card or group of cards appearing. And given that you know the chances of any sequence of cards or events occurring in a game, you have the potential to make precise calculations in any given hand. This means that you don't always have to make a decision according to your 'judgement' or 'feel' but according to the facts and stats, and this makes poker a lot easier to play.

The expression 'outs' is something that gets used with poker players all the time. An out is is a card that can come to improve your hand, with you hoping it comes to make what you think is the best hand at that time. "He has 9 outs to make his flush" - this means there are 9 cards of 1 particular suit available so that if one of them come on say either the turn or river, will make a flush for that player. With this particular example, there are 13 cards of the 1 suit and take away four of them to make a "flush draw" so there would be 9 cards or "puts" left to make a flush. If we make it that you have got to the river still waiting for your final card to make your flush, you can work out the probability of this happening by using simple maths. You have 2 cards (hole) and the 'board' has 4 cards (3 on the flop and 1 for the turn) so there are 46 possible cards left for the outcome on the river. With there being 9 'suited' cards left to make your flush, the chance of you catching that card and making you flush are 9 out of 46 or 19.57%. This might be complicated to you the first time you read it so it might be a good idea for you to re read this paragraph so you have a full understanding of what the basic theory is of probability.

What we'll now discuss is getting value for your money through this system of probability. Lets say you're playing a hand with just the river card to come and there's £100 in the pot. Someone has bet and it costs you £10 to call. In this example, the odds offered by the pot alone is 10/1. So, the complicated bit. If the chance of making your hand is better than the pot odds (10/1 remember) then its a play that you should make. The reverse of this is also correct, that if the odds are worse than your probability then its not value for money and a poor investment. We'll use the same example above with the flush draw scenario. The odds of you getting a card of your suit is 4/1. One in five times you will make your flush. So it was costing you £10 to call a bet with one card to come which was 10/1 pot odds. This situation is a calling situation as you are getting 10/1 for your money against a 4/1 shot to hit your card. However, say you are playing and the pot is £20 and you are facing a bet £10 within the same situation. You are getting 2/1 pot odds while the chance, or probability of your flush is still 4/1. This obviously is not as appealing as the first example and this time it would be a bad investment and you should muck your cards.
This situation is not a matter of 'feel', 'luck' or 'instinct'. These are purely mathematical 'laws' of the game which will help you win money at poker.
We're sure you agree that it isn't as complicated as many players introduced to this concept think it is. However, there is a little more to explain. So far we've only looked at examples with 1 card to come. When there's more than 1 card to come it becomes slightly harder to calculate pot odds.