Besides strategic knowledge you must also have a constant idea about the probabilities in different situations to be successful in poker. The knowledge about probabilities is expressed in odds and two important themes are pot odds and implicit pot odds.
Pot odds are a central area of Texas hold’em as in other forms of poker. The essence of pot odds is to know the value of a hand or drawing hand in relation to the money in the pot. Speaking more concrete this is about knowing when to call or fold depending on the ratio between the pot and the cost for the call according to probabilities.
You have the hole cards 7♥-9♦ and the flop showing K♥-6♣-T♣. As you can see you haven’t hit anything yet, but you are interested see more cards, since you have a drawing hand. You would be very satisfied if the 8 come up, wouldn’t you? That would give you a 6-T straight.
Now the player before you bet 10 units. Are you going to fold or call? (There are no other players in the pot.) To answer this we must look at the size of the pot. There are 100 units in the pot including the last bet.
The mission now is to calculate the odds that you making your straight. You need an 8 to do this which means you have 4 outs among 47 unknown cards. This gives the drawing odds 10.8:1 approximately 11:1. Since there are 100 units in the pot and the call are 10 it gives you a 10:1 pot odds. That actual drawing odds (11:1) in relation to the pot odds (10:1) gives you a negative expectation and therefore the right decision is to fold.
Your hand in this situation is just not worth to play because you will lose money with it in the long run, and in poker the long range terms are essential for your total profit.
In this example, we focused strictly about the odds. This, however, doesn’t mean you from now on should play within an exclusive mathematic perspective. The importance of pot odds varies among the forms of Texas hold’em (the pot odds is more important in Limit compared to No Limit) and of the situation in general, but it’s still a fundamental matter you should care about when playing.
I hope you don’t find it all to complicate with pot odds. I must, unfortunately, tell you that implicit pot odds are even a bit more complicate. On the other hand, it’s the same concept just a few more aspects.
Let’s use the example above once again. We know that the player before you have bet 10 units and it’s 100 in the pot. What about the action after the 4th and the 5th cards? Doesn’t this affect the pot odds? Yes, it does. You must also take into consideration that it’s likely to happen in the next betting rounds. Suppose that your opponent will bet again after the river, this will change the pot odds.
This time you include the effective and implicit odds in your calculation, and therefore you have to decide if to call the bet once again. You count that your opponent will bet 10 units again after the turn and that implies 110 units in the pot. The actual drawing odds are still (10.5:1), but the pot odds are now (11:1). This time it gives you a positive expectation.
The implicit pot odds differ, as you have noticed, from ordinary pot odds as it in some way is about guessing. But having an idea about the implicit odds shall be based on all your information in the hand and that you know about the other player.
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