Poker Hand Odds

Understanding the odds in poker simply comes down to knowing how many cards in the deck will give you a strong poker hand, and if the amount of the bet you have to call justifies it or not. Calculating odds may seem like a difficult endeavor at first, but with some practice it’s actually quite easy to do. We can’t stress enough, though, how critical this skill is to aquire, as knowing your odds is truly what makes poker a game of skill and not luck.

You’re probably already aware that Texas Hold'em is easily the most recognized and popular game being played today. Any night of the week you can find a program on TV where they are playing it, in fact, so this article is dedicated to the figuring of odds for Texas Hold’em.

Let’s start, however, with a very simple explanation of odds. Say you’re flipping a coin. The odds of it coming up either heads or tails is exactly 50%. Now, if you’re flipping for money, and your opponent wagers $5.00 that it will come up heads and furthermore $5.00 if it comes up tails, you’re getting in this instance precisely 1:1 odds…in other words… exactly 50%, and over time you’ll end up breaking even. Now, say your opponent thinks he’s obscenely lucky and makes you an offer of paying $10.00 for every time tails comes up, but you only have to pay him $5.00 for every time heads comes up. Now he’s offering you 2:1 odds on an exactly even money bet, and in the very short term he may well win…but over the course of say 1000 flips, he will absolutely lose his shirt because of the bad odds he offered to you.

To show why this is, if you flip 1000 times, you’ll win 10.00 dollars five hundred times (50%) for $5,000 dollars, and lose 5.00 dollars five hundred times (50%) for a total of $2,500 dollars, giving you a profit of $2,500!

This basic principal of odds happens in almost every hand of poker, and knowing how to calculate them properly will start you down the path of being a successful player.

Let’s go over some pre-flop odds on the probability of being dealt some specific hands before the flop.

Pocket Aces 220:1 any specific pair has these same odds, be it aces thru deuces
Pocket Aces or Kings 110:1
Any pocket pair aces thru deuces 16:1
Ace/King suited 330:1
Ace/King unsuited 110:1
Ace/King suited or unsuited 82:1
Any two suited cards 3.25:1

Calculating Percentage

To figure the percentage of hitting your hand after the flop, you can use a very simple method of counting your “outs” (cards that will make your hand) and then multiplying it by 4 or 2, depending on whether you have one or two cards to come. This method will get you very close to your exact percentage, and close enough for any situation you’ll ever face. (Technically speaking, it may be off by a percent or two in a lot of situations, but that isn’t enough for you to worry about.)

 

As an example of this is, let’s say you’re dealt two suited cards (Kd and 3d)
The flop comes 10d-6d-9h

You’ve flopped a flush draw. To make your hand though, you need another diamond to come on either the “turn” (the fourth board card) or “river” (the fifth board card)…thus giving you two chances to hit a diamond. In a 52 card poker deck there are 13 diamonds. You have two in your hand, and there are two on the board, leaving 9 remaining diamond in the deck. The simple way to figure your odds for hitting a diamond is to take the nine remaining diamonds and multiply them by 4…giving you a 36% (precise percentage is 34.97%) chance of hitting your hand by the river. If a non diamond comes on the turn, you only have one more card in which to get a diamond..so you figure the odds by multiplying the 9 diamonds by 2, giving 18% (precise percentage is 19.6)

Percentage to Odds

Now that we have a basic understanding of how to figure the percentage of hitting your hand, I’ll show you how to change that percentage to odds.

Let’s use the above example of the flush draw. To change your percentage into odds, take the 35% and divide it into 100, giving you 2.9 – 1 = 1.9. This means that if there is $40.00 in the pot and it cost you $10.00 to call, you’re getting 4:1 odds on your money in a hand that only needs 1.9:1 …thusly it is mathematically correct to call the bet. This is called pot odds, and is simply the amount of money in the pot divided by how much it cost you to call: $10.00 into a $40.00 pot is 4:1 pot odds, $10.00 into a $100.00 pot would be 10:1 pot odds.

Another Example

 

Let’s say you’re drawing to and inside straight, meaning there are only four specific cards in the deck that will complete your hand.

You hold Jc-10h-2s
The board is 8s-7d-4c

You need one of the four remaining nines in the deck to make your straight. Using our simple method, multiply 4 (outs) times 4 and you’ll see that there’s a 16% chance of hitting your hand. If a blank comes on the turn, you then take 4 (outs) times 2 and get 8%. Now to change those percentages to odds, do the same as above. 100 divided by 16 minus one equals 5.25 in odds with two cards to come, and for the river, 100 divided by 8 minus one equals 11.5 in odds needed with one card to come.

 

What does all this mean?

You will be faced with decisions in every single hand of poker, and you’ll need to know your odds; whether it is mathematically correct to call or fold. Not knowing this information and calling bets when you’re not getting the correct odds will lead to a life time of losing poker, just as in the example of flipping the coin with the wrong odds.

Here’s a chart showing your odds based on number of outs and one or two cards to come

 

Outs	One Card %	Two Card %	One Card Odds	Two Card Odds	Draw Type
1	2%	4%	46	23	Backdoor Straight or Flush (Requires two cards)
2	4%	8%	22	12	Pocket Pair to Set
3	7%	13%	14	7	One Overcard
4	9%	17%	10	5	Inside Straight / Two Pair to Full House
5	11%	20%	8	4	One Pair to Two Pair or Set
6	13%	24%	6.7	3.2	No Pair to Pair / Two Overcards
7	15%	28%	5.6	2.6	Set to Full House or Quads
8	17%	32%	4.7	2.2	Open Straight
9	19%	35%	4.1	1.9	Flush
10	22%	38%	3.6	1.6	Inside Straight & Two Overcards
11	24%	42%	3.2	1.4	Open Straight & One Overcard
12	26%	45%	2.8	1.2	Flush & Inside Straight / Flush & One Overcard
13	28%	48%	2.5	1.1
14	30%	51%	2.3	0.95
15	33%	54%	2.1	0.85	Flush & Open Straight / Flush & Two Overcards
16	34%	57%	1.9	0.75
17	37%	60%	1.7	0.66