Poker Odds and Percentages

Before playing Texas Holdem, it’s crucial to know certain poker odds and percentages. If you know what your chances of winning are before every bet, call, fold, or raise, you are that much better off on your path to winning. You have to be able to mentally calculate if a bet is worth your amount that you must pay, in your head, on the spot. But before you begin, here are two terms that you must be acquainted with:

Outs – the amount of cards left in the deck that can improve your odds of winning.
Odds – the chance of getting a particular card that you need. To calculate this, divide the number of outs by the amount of cards that you haven’t yet seen.

Keep in mind that there are 13 cards, and 4 suits, for a total of 52 cards. That means at any given point, if you have a pair and you want to shoot for three of a kind, your chances of getting it are 11/52=21%. Or, if you’re desperate and you’re only looking for a pair, your chances of getting it are 12/52=23%.

Phil Gordon developed a simple rule of four and two. He calculated the approximate odds of getting the winning card on the turn by multiplying the number of outs by two. This works because there are 52 cards in a deck. To help you understand it, ask yourself: “How are percentages determined?” Well, here is a short-hand way to do it without a calculator, to get a rough estimate. For the sake of argument, let’s say that each one out of 52 cards is worth 2 percent. In reality, 1 out of 52 does not equal exactly 2.0, but we’re doing it to keep round numbers. Does that make sense? And for getting it by the river, he multiplies it by 4. It’s close enough when absolutely exact calculation is not needed.

Pot odds – the final calculations you’ll need is to make sure the pot is big enough for you to call with the hand that needs to be improved on in order to win. For example, if the pot is $100 and your opponent bets $50 after the turn, this means you must bet $50 in order to have a chance of winning $150. This means you get 3 to 1 odds on your call. If you win one time for every 3 times you lose, you’re even; so you must win at least one out of every 4 games in order to make the call the right decision.

The final calculation you’ll need to make is to see if your odds of getting the winning card are above 25%. If they are, you should call, and you should fold if they’re lower. Example: you hold and eight and a seven, and the community board has ace, queen, six, five. You have 8 outs to make a straight. If the pot is $300 and the player bets $100, then you have to bet $100 to win $400 and your pot odds are 20%. Since you have 8 outs, by the rule of 2, you have about 16% chance of getting a straight. Therefore, you are not getting enough pot odds, and you should fold.