Winning Texas holdem poker players have to have a solid understanding of odds and pot odds.

Here are the most important odds for making poker Straight Texas Holdem hands: The odds of flopping a Straight is 1,04% when you have any connected starting hand. You have less chance of 0.85% to hit a Straight on the Flop with one gapper (like AQ, 53, etc.). Suited Cards Odds In Texas Hold’em Seeing two suited cards will tempt you to play 9-4, but the odds Are 2.5%, which isn’t great.

Many inexperienced players make the mistake of assuming odds and pot odds are the same thing. While the two things are related, they aren’t the same.

The first thing you’re going to learn is what odds and pot odds are, how to quickly calculate them, and how to use them to improve your results at the table. Then you’ll find an extensive list of examples so you can practice what you’ve learned.

It’s a good idea to bookmark this page so you can come back and go over the examples frequently. The more times you go over them the better your ability will be to make the correct decisions at the holdem table.

The best way to develop strong odds and pot odds calculating skills is to study this page and then use what you’ve learned in live Texas holdem play. You’ll make mistakes as you play, but every time you make one make a mental note or write it down.

Then study these situations after the game to see where you made a mistake and learn how to avoid making the same mistake in the future.

A mistake that many new Texas holdem players make is not learning about odds and pot odds because they’re afraid of the math or that it’s too hard. While both items do involve some math, it isn’t difficult once you understand it.

More importantly, the most common odds and pot odds situations happen frequently so you’ll quickly memorize the important situations and won’t have to calculate many hands while playing.

You’ll also learn a few quick tricks and tips that the pros know to help you make fast decisions in the middle of a hand.

Odds

Odds are a mathematical way of explaining how likely or unlikely something is to happen.

You can use odds in two different formats. The first one is a percentage and the second is a ratio. Some players find percentages easier to work with, but you need to learn how to consider Texas holdem odds as ratios. This is important because when you start using pot odds if your odds are already in ratios it saves a step. If you have the odds in percentages you have to either convert the pot to a percentage or convert the odds from a percentage to a ratio.

If this seems confusing, don’t panic. The rest of the page covers odds and pot odds using ratios so you’ll learn the best way possible.

Here’s an example of how you use odds in Texas holdem.

If you have pocket queens and have already seen the flop and it has no queens, what are the odds a queen will land on the turn?

To determine the correct odds you need to determine how many unseen cards remain in the deck. You’ve seen your two hole cards and the three board cards. So you’ve seen five out of 52 cards, leaving 47 unseen cards. You also know that there are two more queens.

This means that two of the remaining cards will give you another queen and 45 of them won’t.

This gives a ratio of 2 to 45 or 45 to 2, depending on how you want to list it. Usually the odds against number is listed first, so you’ll see 45 to 2 or 45:2.

In simpler terms, this means that on average, if you play this exact situation 47 time that you’ll get a queen twice and a card other than a queen 45 times.

If a queen doesn’t land on the turn, what are the odds of one landing on the river?

You’ve seen one more card so two cards are still queens and 44 aren’t.

Here’s another example.

If you have four to a flush after the flop, what are the odds the turn will make a flush for you?

In this situation you have 9 cards out of 47 unseen that will complete your flush. So 9 cards complete your flush and 38 don’t. This means 38 to 9 or 38:9.

If you don’t complete your flush on the turn the odds change to 37:9 on the river.

But what about the cards in your opponent’s hands and the ones that are already in the muck?

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because your opponents have seen their cards that you don’t count them in your calculations. The only numbers that matter are the number of cards you’ve seen and the number of cards you haven’t seen.

Sometimes the card or some of the cards you need are in other player’s hands or in the muck, but it doesn’t matter. The cards you need are just as likely to be in the remaining cards to be dealt and in the long run they’ll be in any particular location an equal number of times based on the probabilities.

The way many players visualize this is by assigning each place in the deck of cards a number, 1 through 52. As the deck is ready to have the first card dealt the top card is number 1 and the second card is number 2 down to the bottom card being number 52.

As the cards are dealt, burned, folded, etc. more cards are used from the top of the deck. It doesn’t matter what happens to each card or if you see it or not.

In the long run each card has an equal chance to be number 1, number 36, number 52, or any other number. Over millions of hands each individual card will be in each of the 52 places the same number of times.

This means that if you need the ace of clubs to complete your hand it’s an unseen card and doesn’t matter where it’s located during the current stack. Over the long run it’ll be in each of the 52 positions an equal number of times, so all you can do is work with the seen and unseen cards.

You can also use odds to determine the likelihood of other things happening during a hand.

What are the odds that the first card you’re dealt is an ace?

You know the deck has 52 cards and four aces, so the odds of the first card you receive being an ace are 48:4. This can be reduced to 12:1. You reduce ratios by dividing the same number into both numbers. In this case you divide both 48 and 4 by 4.

Another way to look at this is 1 out of every 13 cards on average is an ace. This makes sense because each suit has 13 cards and one of them is an ace.

Ratios are important because you use them when determining pot odds. You’ll learn more about pot odds in the next section.

But if you want to know the odds of things like getting dealt pocket aces you need to use a different kind of probability.

Before teaching you about this type of probability you need to make sure you want to try to learn it. If you’re getting confused or worried about all of this math, skip to the pot odds section. It builds on what you’ve already learned and you don’t have to know anything about this next part in order to be a master Texas holdem player.

The main difference is you need to look at the possibilities of how many events out of how many possibilities instead of the positive verses the negative. This is easier to understand using an example.

As you’ve already seen when you determine a ratio or odds you compare the cards that can help you and the ones that can’t. When you determine the possibility of getting dealt pocket aces you need to use the number of cards that can help achieve this out of the total number of cards.

So the odds of getting an ace as the first card are 4 out of 52 and as your second card are 3 out of 51. After the first card there are only 51 remaining cards in the deck and only 3 remaining aces.

Here’s why this distinction is important. To get the actual chances of being dealt pocket aces you put 4 over 52, like a fraction, and 3 over 51 and multiply them.

This gives you the chances of being dealt pocket aces as 220 to 1.

When you multiply the fractions you get 12 over 2,652, which reduce to 1 over 221. This is then made back into a ratio like discussed above. 1 time you receive pocket aces and 220 times you don’t, so the odds are 220 to 1.

Outs

Once you understand how odds work, the next thing you must understand is how to determine how many outs you have in any situation where you need to understand your pot odds.

You combine your knowledge of odds with the number of outs and the amount in the pot and of the bet you’re facing to figure out your pot odds.

Your outs are the cards that improve your hand enough to win the pot. Rarely can you be 100% sure about every one of your outs, but in most situations you can make an educated guess.

Example

If you have a king and a ten and the flop has an ace and a king, if one of your opponents bets the odds are they have an ace. This means you’re behind in the hand, but if you hit one of the other two kings or one of the remaining three t

Texas Holdem Odds Wikipedia