Winning Concept 6: Be Aware Of The Pot Odds
May 1st, 2009
Pot odds is a concept that looks at the risks against the rewards of making a bet—the risks being the cost of a bet, and the rewards being the amount of money to be won from the pot. For example, if the pot holds $ 100 and the bet to be called is $20, then the pot odds are $100 to $20, or 5 to 1. You use pot odds to determine if the cost of going for the pot is justified by the amount you might win. Let's look at an illustrative situation to see how this works.
Let's say you're playing $10-$20 seven-card stud and two opponents are left. You hold aces over 3s, and $40 is due your position. The first opponent, whom you figure for a probable three-of-a-kind, has opened on sixth street with a $20 bet. He was raised by the second player $20 more. The second player sits with four hearts and has straight possibilities as well, good scare cards against your two pair. With the $40 worth of bets, the pot now holds $240. According to the pot odds, should you call?
Of course, you don't know for sure what cards your opponents hold in the hole, but you figure your hand to be second best without improvement. You must draw an ace or a 3 to fill the two pair into a full house, the only way you can win the hand. However, the hearts hand has one of your 3s, and you noticed another 3 pass out of play earlier, leaving you, in fact, only two live cards, the remaining aces.
There has been a total of twenty-eight cards revealed: the eight open cards of your opponents, your six cards, and the fourteen cards folded earlier by the other players. That leaves twenty-four unknown cards. Only two of them, the aces, can help your hand. The odds of improving to be a winner are 2 in 24 (1 in 12), or 11 to 1 against. The pot offers only 6 to 1, poor odds against an 11 to 1 chance of improvement. Aces up is normally a powerful hand, but in this situation the correct play is to fold.
The above hand worked well as an illustration, because only one card was yet to be played, which made estimating your pot odds relatively easy. Estimating pot odds value with more than one card to play becomes more difficult as more unknowns come into play. How fast will the pot grow? What future bets will have to be called? What new cards dealt will change your projected strength vis-a-vis your opponents? Though more variables may come into play, and a pot odds analysis may become less exact, a rough cost-of-playing versus money-to-be-won calculation is always helpful in determining whether a hand is worth playing. Let's look at a pot odds application for draw poker.
Pot odds dictate that four-card straights and flushes should be folded before the draw if two other players or fewer are in the pot, unless the game is being played with a large ante. The chances of improving these four-card totals to a straight or flush are approximately 4 to 1 against. With less than three players in contention, the money in the pot is generally not enough to justify a call.
For example, in a $5-$ 10 poker game with eight participants and a $1 ante, the pot initially holds $8 worth of antes. If only one player calls the opener, these two $5 bets boost the pot up to $17 in bets and antes. With only $ 17 to win and a cost of $5 to call, the pot offers less than the 4 to 1 odds needed to make the call a good play. The smart move here is to fold.
On the other hand, if the above game were played with a high ante, say $2 per player, calling in the above situation would be an excellent play. The $10 in bets added to $16 in antes ($2 ante per player times eight players), fills the pot with $26 in bets and antes. Those are odds of 26 to 5 on the bet, better than the 4 to 1 odds needed to justify the call. Playing to the draw in this situation is an excellent move. While evaluating pot odds is not always an exact science, since you're making some estimations and there are always unknowns, it is a useful and important evaluation tool that will help you make profitable strategic decisions in poker.
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