Poker Mathematics & Gaining an Edge
It’s important to understand odds and probabilities. You will have to use odds and probabilities a lot when playing poker to make good profitable decisions during your play. Probability is the percentage an even will happen. Odds tell you how often an even will not happen. An example of a probability is that you will get an ace the next card (without one showing) 8.51% of the time. As opposed to your odds of getting dealt pocket aces is 220 to 1.
Taking odds to the next step and applying them to poker is the concepts of pot odds and implied pot odds. Pot odds are pretty easy to understand and calculate. To calculate pot odds you take the current pot amount and divide it by the bet you have to make. Take for example that $200 is in the pot currently and you have to make a $20 bet to call. You are getting $200/$20 or 10 to 1 pot odds. Implied pot odds takes into consideration the bets you will receive on the next betting rounds. So if you think that you will get an extra $60 if you make your hand, your implied pot odds are $260/$20 or 13 to 1. It’s important to understand how to calculate these odds. Applying these odds and calculations in poker is explained next.
Before we get to the application of pot and implied pot odds, we have to understand how to calculate the number of outs we have. The number of outs we have are the number of cards that can come on the board to improve our hand or make our intended hand. For example, if we have a gut shot straight draw (meaning we need one rank card to make a straight of any suit) we have 4 outs. If we have a flush draw (we have 4 suits, and need one more of the same suit to make a flush), we have 9 outs. Taking this one step forward is to determine the number of discounted outs. A discounted out is an out for you, but probably will help your opponent make a better hand than yours. For example, in the example of the gut shot straight draw, we have 4 outs. Maybe one of those four cards may give your opponent a flush, so that would be a discounted out and give you only 3 outs. It’s very hard to determine the number of discounted outs without getting a good read on your opponents hand. This takes practice reading of your opponents and figuring out their hands by their betting patterns and observing their play.
To use these odds to make profitable calls and plays in poker is important. To make mathematically correct and profitable decisions you need to convert your number of outs to odds using the an odds chart and compare those odds to your pot odds. So in the pot and implied odds example above, we had 10 to 1 pot odds and 13 to 1 implied pot odds. If this example was a situation where you were drawing to a gut shot straight draw with 4 good outs, you would had odds of 11 to 1 to hit. To make this a good call you would want your odds of making your hand less than that of the pot odds you are getting. In this example you shouldn’t make the call because 11 to 1 is greater than 10 to 1. But if you take into consideration your implied pot odds which is 13 to 1, you would be right to make the call with your 11 to 1 odds of making your hand because 11 to 1 is less than that of 13 to 1.
