Advanced Poker Strategy - A Simple Explanation Of What Pot Odds Are

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Advanced Poker Strategy - A Simple Explanation Of What Pot Odds Are
Managing your pot odds is an advanced poker strategy in which you calculate the probability of winning compared to how much you will win.
Any advanced poker strategy will include some reference to pot odds. Whether it's called game theory, probability, payout risk, it's all the same. The premise is you calculate how much you have to pay, what you're going to get back and the chances of actually winning. Then this all goes into a steamy-couldron to give you your answer of whether you should play or not. Let's look at an example.
Advanced Poker Strategy - Managing Your Pot Odds
Managing your pot odds simply means that you don't take risks at times when you won't get back a big enough payout for this risk. When you calculate your outs (the cards you need to get your best hand) and compare that to how much you have to bet to play and how much you will win (the pot size) you get your pot odds.
For example, say you have a open ended straight draw at the river. You have four of the cards of the straight and just need one more. You have eight outs. That is, there are eight cards that will give you your winning hand. Your odds are about 5 to 1. That means that every 5 times you will win once.
So, if you the pot was $100 and it was $10 to call, that would be 10 to 1 which means that every time you win you will get ten times that amount. Ten times on 5 to 1 odds is great because every five times you will win and when you win you will get ten times the amount. So over the long term you will come out well ahead.
On the other hand, if the pot was $500 and it was $200 to call, that is 5 to 2 which means that every time you win you will only get two and a half times that amount. So this on the same straight draw 5 to 1 odds is bad. Because you will win one out of every 5 times but when you win you will only get two and a half back. So over the long term you will slowly lose money.
This advanced poker strategy is useful to utilise whenever you aren't sure whether you should continue playing or not. I find it much more useable when the odds/risk are basic easy numbers. With extremely advanced calculations it can get a bit hefty. It's a lot easier to use a computer program to do these for you.
So now as you are reading this begin to think about, and become aware of, how you can use pot odds to enhance your current poker game. And realize that the only real thing that will secure you success in poker is a feeling of intense curiosity and interest for learning new information about how to play poker better.
Because when you realize just how important new information is for your poker game, you will begin to experience the feeling of success, what success feels like, because getting your hands on any new information you can is really the only way to true success in any field.



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