Pot Odds and Draws

To all my fellow math-haters out there: give this article a chance.  The concept of pot odds isn’t as bad as it sounds.  All pot odds do is tell you whether or not it’s profitable to call a bet.  If the pot odds are in your favor, you can call.  If not, you should fold.  That’s it.  Trust me; I’m terrible at math so I’ve made this concept as simple as possible.  It’s actually pretty easy once you get the basic idea of it.

Pot odds are a way of expressing the size of a bet to the size of a pot.  The easiest way to explain this is to use an example.

Let’s say you’re playing a no limit game and the pot is $50.  If your opponent bets $25 the pot is now $75 and you have to call $25 to stay in.  The pot odds for this would be expressed as 75:25 which reduces down to 3:1.

Ok stay with me now, it’s almost over.

The odds to complete a flush draw are roughly 4:1.  If you were chasing a flush draw in the above example, all you would do is compare the pot odds (3:1) to the flush draw odds (4:1).

Since you’re only getting 3:1 on a 4:1 draw, you can not call this bet and make a profit over the long term.

Let’s use a long term example to illustrate why this is.  If you got into a situation similar to this 100 times, your results would look like this:

80 Losses x $25 = $2,000

20 Wins x $75 = $1,500

Total Loss = $500

Now if the opponent had instead bet $10 into that $50 pot, you would be getting 60:10 on your call which reduces down to 6:1.  In this case you’d be getting 6:1 on a 4:1 draw which is a great deal.  It would be incorrect to fold here.

That’s all there is to it.  The easiest way to figure out your drawing odds is to just memorize a few of the more common ones and then add more as you go.

Some of the more common draws and their odds are:

Flush Draw: 4:1
Open Ended Straight Draw: 5:1
Gutshot Straight Draw: 11:1
Two Pair to a Full House: 11:1

Poker Odds Chart