How to use odds at the poker table.

Good Proposition?

Heads or tails? If you win, I give you $100, if you lose you must pay $80. Right, I am going to go broke pretty quickly. I lay 100:80, that is, 5:4, in your favor, on a 1:1 event. You would win $100 50% of the time, and lose $80 50% of the time, which means your gain would be 0.5x100-0.5x80=10, ie. $10 by event, on average. Good Proposition for you.

Now, roll a die. If you roll a 6, I give you $100. If you don’t, you give me $25. Should you play with me? Let’s first compute the payout odds: win $100, lose $25, this is 4:1 in your favor. What about your chances to actually roll a 6? One favorable number out of six, thus five unfavorable numbers: this is 5:1 in my favor. We say that you are a 5:1 underdog (or dog) to roll a 6.

In order to find out if this is a good proposition for you, you just have to compare the payout odds against the odds of winning. Here, we have 4:1 vs 5:1, respectively. The odds of winning are poorer than the payout odds. You should not accept this proposition. If you do, you lose 25/6 dollar per event on average, ie. a bit more than $4.

What is the bottom line? Payout odds are useless if you don’t know your odds of winning, since you must compare them to make a good decision. This is extremely important at the poker table for several reasons:

• you sometimes get terrific payout odds, which usually indicates that you should call, but your real chances of winning are so poor that you actually lose money by calling.
• conversely, trying to hit a longshot (like a gutshot draw) is generally bad, but can be justified if the payout odds are big enough.
• many a time, you know that you can’t be ahead, but the pot, though not monstruous, is big enough for you to call with profit. This happens very often in tournaments, especially against short stacks.

The concept of playing when the payout odds are better than the odds of winning, is the core of winning poker. Whatever the result, you know that, on the long term, you will necessarily make money with the correct play. Even if you lose ten times in a row. This simply does not matter.

Important: each of your decision should be based on your chances of winning compared to the payout odds. One without the user is pointless.

Pot Odds

In poker, the payout is comprised by the current pot and the future possible bets. If there is no money left to bet, that is, everybody is all-in but one player, there will not be future betting, so calculating your payout odds is a simple matter of comparing the cost of calling versus the size of the pot. This is what we call pot odds.

You always should know, at least approximately, the size of the pot, so as to figure out your pot odds and to avoid making kneejerk reactions that turn out to be wrong.

As a corollary, it is vital to control the size of the pot with your betting so that your opponents should not have a correct play that is against your interest, like calling a cheap bet with a draw when you have the best hand. This is often referred to as cutting their odds. Sometimes, you cannot completely cut their odds, especially at Limit poker, but you should still make sure to minimize the odds so as to limit their average winnings. Better give them only a good call than an excellent call, since they would get a bigger share of the pot in the latter case.

Example:

Cutting the odds also implies that you can estimate your opponent’s chances of winning. You can either compute an estimation at the table, or learn by heart the frequent scenarii for your game. We will discuss this in a following part.

Important: you should always consider the odds you are giving to your opponents when it’s your turn to act, and make sure to do your best to give them losing propositions.

Related Items:

• Holdem Frequent Match-ups Odds
• Implied Odds
• Odds Basics