Calculating Pot Odds
Pot odds are the odds a player has to make their hand in comparison to the pot size. Amateur players will regularly make horrible plays in relation to the pot odds. Most players that struggle with pot odds, struggle with the calculation process. There are a few shortcuts that can help players calculate pot odds quickly for those that struggle with the mathematics. Online poker players also have the advantage of being at home where they can use a nice cheat sheet to help them out when trying to calculate the pot odds at poker sites online.
How to Calculate Pot Odds
Pot odds will help determine whether you should call a bet or not. More specifically, pot odds will help the player decide whether calling the bet is worth it. If a player is chasing a flush draw and the turn has already come, there is only one card left to come, the river. If the player has four of the needed cards for the flush, they have nine outs. There are thirteen cards of each suit and four are already shown, which leaves nine left of the same suit. The player needs to take the number 52 (amount of cards in the deck) and subtract the four community cards along with the two in their hand. This leaves 46 cards (52 - 6). Out of the 46 cards, only nine of them will make the flush and the other 37 are basically worthless. The player's odds of hitting the flush are 37/9.
When reduced down, the odds are 4.1 to 1. By these odds, the player will need to have a pot of at least four times the bet to make the odds worth it. In other words, a $2/$4 game would need to have at least $16 in the pot to justify calling a $4 bet.
Shortcut
Players can take their number of outs and times it times two and then add two as a shortcut for calculating pot odds. This is sometimes faster and more efficient for calculating pot odds on the fly. Using the same example as above, the player has nine outs. Nine times two plus two equals twenty. This is meant as a percentage. The player has a 20% chance of hitting their outs with one card to come. The 20% is used as a quick pot odds determination. The player should not call any bet that is higher than 20% of the current pot size.
The mentioned methods for calculating pot odds only refers to hitting the player's outs on the next card. The odds change if there are more cards to come than one. The chart below will show the odds based on the amount of odds and cards to come.
Outs |
2 Cards to Come |
Card to Come |
1 |
22.5/1 |
45/1 |
2 |
11/1 |
22/1 |
3 |
7/1 |
14.3/1 |
4 |
5.1/1 |
10.5/1 |
5 |
3.9/1 |
8.2/1 |
6 |
3.1/1 |
6.7/1 |
7 |
2.6/1 |
5.6/1 |
8 |
2.2/1 |
4.8/1 |
9 |
1.9/1 |
4.1/1 |
10 |
1.6/1 |
3.6/1 |
11 |
1.4/1 |
3.2/1 |
12 |
1.2/1 |
2.8/1 |
13 |
1.1/1 |
2.5/1 |
14 |
1/1 |
2.3/1 |
15 |
.9/1 |
2.1/1 |
