Pot Odds and Implied Odds for New Poker Player

Pot odds are the odds equal the ratio of the amount of money in the pot compared to the amount of money you need to put in it. To clarify this, think of it this way. Take a $5/$10 game and there is $40 in the pot. You are playing for a chance to win a $10 prize, your pot odds are 5 to 1. Your odds of winning are better than 1 to 1, therefore you should call the bet.

Implied Odds

Implied odds represent how much money the pot will be after you bet. Let’s say there is $50 in the pot after you bet, your opponent bets $15, which is the same amount as the pot, and the blinds call. Explained more clearly, each blind has 3 bets stacked in front of them, the first player bets $15, the second player bets $30 and the third player bets $50. All 3 players are getting the same amount in the pot, which is $30. The implied odds for the third player are 3 to 1, which means they will get paid if he wins. The implied odds for the second player are 2 to 1, or less, which means they are getting less than the last bet. And the blinds get the last 8 dollars, or 3 if you’re playing no limit.

Call to Raise

Let’s say the pot is $95 and the next bet is $45; the pot is now $150 and the next bet is $65. You have called the bet in the previous rounds, and now you are being offered a 4 dollar raise to a $150 bet. What this effectively does is push the $65 pot odds, which was the actual odds of winning the hand before the raise, into the future. You are now playing the correct odds, knowing that the 4 dollars bet is yours to win if you have the best hand, into the future. You’ve just increased your odds of winning the hand!

Of course this is the old saying, high is low, but in poker terms it isn’t always true. You need to consider the power of your hand, the profile of your opponent, the size of the bet, and so on. Furthermore, you need to consider your own hand power, relative to your opponent’s hand power, in order to make correct EV decisions in poker.

Imagine you have pocket Q’s. You’ve flopped top pair and you are up against a determined poker player. You know you have the better hand, and you recognize that the determination of the poker player is fairly strong. You know that the poker player will put you on any hand with an Ace or a King, and that you are likely already beaten. But, you want to take a shot at the pot. You call the bet, and the poker player folds.

That’s a situation where you, a poker player, would have no poker hand at all, in fact you probably would not even have a poker hand at all were it not for the call. You missed your flush draw, but you’ve got another one! You’ve got, perhaps, one of the worst hands in all of poker, but you’re alive and the money is in your stack.

This is a typical example of a hand that you, a poker player, would have to be most concerned about the power you hold in the hand rather than the strength of the poker hand that you hold. Ultimate power in poker hands is founded largely on a hand’s relative strength and these relative strengths are rarely, if ever, absolute. relative strength is relative, that is the relative strength of one hand against another, hand is not absolute, the power in one hand will sometimes be felt as more than the power in another.

To understand the concept of poker hand strength, you must first appreciate poker hand values and poker hand combinations. To have a listing of the poker hand rankings, click on the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vodka138

A poker hand consists of 5 playing cards, each of which is uniquely and specifically grouped into a poker hand (which may also be called a poker hand). When playing poker, a player must make a decision whether to play the poker hand that they have, or to bluff. When bluffing, a player will typically give false tells to opponents in order to build the impression that the player is weak when in reality the opposite may be true.

Poker has many variants. Some of the most popular variants are stud poker, draw poker, Texas Holdem, Omaha, and five card draw. Poker hands in these games are vulnerable. When playing five card draw poker, a player must use five cards to generate a hand. Out of all the cards, five must be returned to the wild card and the other five must be kept by the player.