Introduction to Pot Odds

To some, poker is a game of luck. To others, it is a game of skill. A professional poker player is one who understands that poker – both cash games and poker tournaments – is a skill game with luck elements, as opposed to a game of pure luck such as roulette.

Part of what makes poker skillful as opposed to other casino games is your ability to manipulate the odds. However, you can’t manipulate the odds if you don’t understand them. This is why the idea of pot odds is so important.

Pot Odds

Pot odds themselves are not hard to understand. They simply represent your payout odds in a certain pot.

For example, in roulette, your payout odds for a single number are 35-to-1, meaning if you win, you get $35 for every $1 you bet. Similarly, pot odds are your payout odds for poker. If there is a $35 pot and you need to call a $1 bet to see if you win, you are getting 35-to-1 pot odds.

Using Pot Odds

What good is this information? In roulette, your true odds of hitting a single number are 36 or 37-to-1. This is a bad bet because the payout odds are lower than the true odds.

In roulette, you can't do anything about this. In poker, you can. If the pot odds, or payout odds, are higher than the true odds, you can make the bet. If they aren’t, you can pass.

In other words, if you have a better than 35-to-1 chance of winning the pot, it is correct to make the bet. If not, it isn’t.

Pot Odds in Practice

The most common example of putting pot odds into practice is if you are on a draw. Let’s say you hold As Ts and the board is 5s 3s Kc 7d. There is $100 in the pot and your opponent bets his last $50. Should you call?

Well, the pot is now $150 and you have to call $50 to try to win it, which is 150-to-50 or 3-to-1 pot odds. You must now determine your odds of winning the hand.

You know you will win with any spade, and there are nine remaining in the deck. You also assume you will win with any ace. This gives you 12 cards, or “outs” to win the pot.

There are 46 cards you have not seen and 12 are winners for you, which means that 34 are not. Therefore, your odds of winning are 34-to-12, which reduces roughly to a little better than 3-to-1, meaning a call is correct. If you did not think you could win with an ace, your odds would be 37-to-9, or about 4-to-1, which would make a call incorrect.