Successful poker play is predicated on knowing the odds. You may not be able to control the outcome of an individual situation. However, by controlling the payout odds vs. the odds of something actually happening, you can create positive expected value situations and win money in the long run, which makes poker a unique casino game.
Odds and Probability
Let's say you have a fair coin and you make a bet that when you flip it, tails will come up twice as often as heads. If it comes up tails, your friend gets a dollar. If you can convince your friend that tails will come up twice as often, he should give you two dollars for every time heads comes up, to be fair.
Of course, the reality is that heads will come up just as often as tails, so even if he wins a dollar on the first, the first two or even the first ten flips, eventually you will have to come out ahead because you are winning twice as much on something that happens equally often. You are getting 2-to-1 on a 1-1 proposition.
In other games like, say, roulette, the payout is always a little smaller than the odds of something happening. This is what creates the house edge. In poker, on the other hand, you are in charge of finding the right spots.
How to Determine Poker Odds
Poker players win the same way, by getting opponents to give them longer odds than the true odds of something happening. Calculating the odds of winning a coin flip is easy. There are only two sides.
Figuring out your odds of winning a poker hand is a little trickier since there are 52 cards, but it can be done. You need to determine your "outs," or the number of cards that will give you a winning hand (if you think you already have the winning hand, the pot odds are irrelevant with respect to calling a bet because they are in your favor; in fact, you should often raise to give your opponents bad odds to catch you).
After the flop, there are 47 cards you haven't seen, two in your hand and three on the board. If you have four outs to win, such as needing a jack to complete a gutshot straight, you are 43-to-4 or about 11-to-1 to win. If you have eight outs, such as needing a seven or queen to make an open ended straight draw, you are 39-to-8, or about 5-to-1, and so on.
Poker Odds and Pot Odds
The next step is figuring out the odds that you will get paid off at - this is also known as pot odds. You need to see how much money is in the pot and how much money you have to put in it to win the hand.
If the pot is $90 and someone bets $6, there's now $96 in the pot. You are getting 16-to-1 on a call. If you're waiting for the jack to make a straight, as in the above example, you're getting 16-to-1 on an 11-to-1 shot, which is an easy call.
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