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Poker Odds and Probabilities

Calculating odds play an essential part during poker game play. Players would have to know how to calculate pot odds, hand odds and poker odds. Knowing your odds during game play will certainly enable you to make the correct decision and save lots of money. Calculation of poker odds is the math part of poker and this is one of the main reason whey poker is not a game of chance.

All poker games are based on odds and in order for one to be a good poker player you certainly have to know how to calculate the odds during the game.

Poker odds give a detailed analysis of your winning chances against you losing chances. It is the comparison of how much you get paid vs the likelihood of something happening. One advantage of knowing how to calculate odds is that the method of calculation is similar for all poker variations.

When calculating odds, a player would have to know the expected value of each hand played. You would have to know the positive expected value and the negative expected value. The negative expected value (-EV) denotes that your hand is most likely to lose and the positive expected value (+EV) denotes that your hand is most likely to win.

During game play, poker odds are to be calculated as soon as you seat on the table and cards dealt to you. Odds should be calculated before flop (pre-flop) and during each betting interval flop, turn and river. Most of the calculations are not accurate but they certainly give an advantage to the player to make the right decision and it improves your game play. For example, when playing Texas Hold’em, if given a hand of 2-7 off suit, some players tend to thing that 2-7 pre-flop is not an effective hand but literally this is known as the hammer. The hand can certainly be developed into a good hand during the flop and the player would have to calculate the odds whether s/he will get the nuts out of this hand. The percentage of getting the nuts from this hand (pre-flop) is at 50%.

We can look at another example, suppose an ace has been dealt on the table during the flop. There is great probanility that one of your opponents is holding an ace if your hand does not consist of an ace. Therefore, you would have to pay more attention on how your opponents are playing and if any opponent makes a re-raise this can certainly indicate to you that the opponent of the re-raise has either an ace or a stronger hand.

Calculating of odd improves your poker game play.