The concept of pot odds in Texas Hold’em (or in any poker variation) is an extremely important and under-utilized aspect of the game. Understanding and correctly evaluating Pot Odds and the associated implied odds will make you a phenomenally better player and make you win more.

The best part about pot odds, they’re not hard to understand. In fact, it is just basic math. If it was terribly hard it would be impossible to do at the poker table in the middle of a tournament with all eyes on you and only a few seconds to act.

To factor your pot odds, you need to look at two things.

1. The amount of money currently in the pot.

2. The odds of you getting the card(s) you need to make the winning hand.

We’ll look at the second one first, and its better envisioned with a drawing hand.

Say you hold the following pocket cards:

Kh Js – the King of Hearts and the Jack of Spades

And the flop is as follows:

Qc 10d 4s – The Queen of Clubs, the 10 of Diamonds, and the 4 of Spades.

So what does this give us. We have no flush draw, and a rainbow flop. We do however, have an open ended straight draw, with either a 9 or an Ace giving us a nice straight. We have two chances to get either of these cards – one on the turn and one on the river. There are a potential of 8 cards in the deck to help us, assuming they weren’t dealt to other players – 4 9’s and 4 Aces. These are our 8 “outs”, the cards that will give us the winning hand.

So evaluating that – we’ve seen 5 cards in the entire deck. Our 2 hole cards and the 3 that came on the flop. There are 47 cards left in the deck, 8 of which could help us. Subtracting 8 from 47 gives us 39, or the number of cards that will not help us. 39 divided by 8 = 4.875 to 1 of hitting our necessary cards.

So now we look at the money in the pot. If the pot is $100 ($80 currently in pot and a $20 bet in front of you); we have to call a $20 bet, the odds on our money are 5 to 1 (put $20 in to win $100, or mathematically $100 divided by $20).

Since the pot odds (which are 5 to 1) are higher than the odds of us getting our drawing cards (which are 4.875 to 1) it makes sense to call the bet. We stand a chance at making $100 for a mere $20 (not including money we’ve already put in the pot); so making the call is a good choice.

However, if the pot was different, we would face a different predicament.

Assume the pot is $100 with $60 in the pot and $40 bet in front of us. To play for the pot we have to call that $40. So $100/$40 = 2.5 to 1 odds. Since the pot odds are now lower than the odds of making our draw, it’s a foolish call.

When calculating pot odds at the table, you don’t have to be exact. If you can see you have 8 cards that can help you and so many that can hurt you, just round up a little to do it on the fly. In our first example, we had 39/8, giving us 4.875. We could easily just do 40/8 and say 5 to 1 odds – and with it being even, its still a respectable call.

Implied odds are slightly different. You factor pots the same as above, however, you then look at the future betting. You are forced to assume how much people will bet again on the turn and the river, and how much it will cost you to call those bets. In a basic nutshell, implied odds take pot odds + expected future value of betting rounds to determine the most amount of money you can extract if you make your hand.

Understanding and using pot odds to make your game decisions will allow you to extract the most value from your hands and win more money. You’ll be able to throw away hands that won’t win, and you’ll be able to play confidently.