Every
one knows that if you have a drawing hand, it is important to
figure out the pot odds before you make a call.. What that means
is are the odds of you making the hand and winning the pot greater
than the amount you have to call relative to the pot. Clearly
it is hard to figure out the exact percentages in the middle
of a hand when you only have twenty seconds to act. However
there is a rule of thumb that will get you the correct odds
within a percent or two and takes only seconds to learn and
remember.
The first thing that you do is count up the number of outs
that you have. Then the percent chance that the next card
will be one of your outs is your number of outs multiplied
by two. Say you are drawing to a spade flush. There are two
spades on the board, two in your hand, which leaves nine remaining
in the deck. Multiply 9 * 2 = 18 percent that the next card
will be a spade.
Let's examine this a little more closely. After the flop there
are 47 unknown cards left in the deck, after the turn there
are 46 which means that the odds of any given card being the
next one to come out are
1/47 = 2.1 %
1/46 = 2.2 %
If we approximate this as 1 in 50 instead
of 1 in 47 we see that any given card has a 2% chance of coming
out. Which means to find the chance that one of our outs is
next we simply multiply it by two. To find the chance that
one of our outs comes on the turn or the river multiply it
by four.
It is important to note that these are underestimates.
i.e. this rule of thumb would approximate the chances of your
flush coming to be 36 % instead of 38%. If you would like
to be more exact, multiply by 2 or 4 and add 1 percent for
every 8 chances you have of hitting your out. So in this case
we would add 2% because we have 9 chances on the turn and
9 chances on the river for 18 chances total.
Questions or Comments? Want
to Add Your Site to My Links? Contact Me at WebMaster (at) CollegePokerTips
(dot) com
Check Out My New Site Savvy
Affiliate.com - Where you can get 100's of free articles for
your site, tools to diagnose and improve your webpage, free templates
to begin your site, and a directory of different affiliate programs
you can apply for.
|
