If you watch poker on television it is nearly a given you will hear the term “pot odds” multiple times during the broadcast. Every commentator is saying something about pot odds all the time. So what exactly are they talking about? The poker odds you receive when factoring the amount in the pot vs. the amount of your next call or bet are known as the pot odds. For example, there is $100 in the pot already and you have four cards to a flush. If you hit the flush, you will win the pot as you play poker.
Someone bets $10. Should you make the call as you learn poker? It is important to know the poker odds based on your hand versus the money in the pot. So how do we calculate poker pot odds as we learn poker and consider poker tips? The simplest way to calculate your poker hand odds is to already have a working knowledge of your overall odds. You can either take the time to do the math or check our one of the charts that many poker sites have.
Once you’ve figured out your poker odds of making a hand you can move onto the poker pot odds to determine your next move as you learn poker tips. Let’s say you have a pair of 6’s. There has been a raise and a few calls, now it’s your turn. You don’t think your 6’s will win outright but you think a set would. You know that your chance of hitting another 6 on the flop is about 8 to 1 in poker hand odds. So there would have to be more than 8 bets already in the pot for you to call. Count the bets and raises, if the number is over eight you have poker pot odds and may want to call as you learn poker and play winning poker hands.
If you can calculate poker pot odds you will know how your hand stands in relation to the money in the pot. That is how many pros make their decisions and you can do the same thing when playing poker. Learning to calculate pot odds is just another tool that you can use to increase your knowledge of the game and become more successful as you learn poker. Part of the answer to the question on whether poker hands are worth playing is based on the reads of what is taking place as you learn how to play poker. An online poker player should be noticing if any of his opponents are on tilt, on hot or lucky streaks, the relative chip stack counts, and any other potential poker tells as part of an overall poker guide. All of these factors go into the larger equation, which is the size of the pot that the online poker players are shooting for. Pot size ultimately determines, along with the other factors mentioned, whether or not a Texas Holdem player should play or fold his poker hands.
Sometimes, in this era of online poker and the overall exploding popularity of poker strategies, there is a tendency for many poker players to prove that they are the smartest player at the poker table and they end up getting a little to creative and over-thinking ways to play their winning poker hands. Texas Holdem is ultimately a very simple game and online poker players must simply judge the ultimate question of risk/reward, which is another way to say judging the potential of their poker hands against the size of the pot. The larger the pot when people play poker online, the more forgiving a Texas holdem player can be in playing marginal poker hands as he considers poker tips.
When playing online poker hands in which the pot is building to a large amount, a multi-pot scenario in which the majority of Texas holdem players are betting on their poker hands, this offers great “pot odds” and makes drawing poker hands such as connectors or flush draws worth sticking with because the potential payoff is so high. Conversely, if there are just a few chips in the pot, or if the pot consisted of just the blinds, drawing poker hands are not worth the risk because the reward is so small as part of overall poker tips and poker strategies.
An online poker player must ultimately judge the ratio of poker chips that he will win versus the risk that he must take and pay for to win those chips when learning how to play poker. Many professional Texas holdem players will even calculate poker odds mentally before deciding to bet on their poker hands as the play poker online.