What Are Pot Odds?

Pot odds are the ratio between what you have to pay and what you potentially can win. Say that you and a friend flip a coin for $10. When heads come up you win and when tails come up you lose. This is 50-50 proposition and the odds are therefore 1 to 1 (you will win once and lose once on average.)

When making pot-odds calculations in poker you compare what you have to pay to stay in a hand and the size of the pot.

Hand Example

Say that you for instance have a flush draw on the turn in a game of Texas Hold'em and you know that if a card of the suit you wish for comes on the river you will most certainly win the hand. There is right now $80 in the pot and your opponent bets $20.

Now we know that you have to call $20 to win $100, which gives you 20 to 100, or 1 to 5, in pot odds. You know that if your hand statistically wins more often than one time in six attempts, you are offered positive expectation on your money. If you would lose five times and win once, it's a break-even proposition.

 

Hand Odds

However, pot odds don't tell you anything if you don't compare it with the chance of making your hand. Let's look at the flush-draw-on-turn example:

You hold two hearts and there are two harts on the board when the hand has reached the turn. Since there are 13 hearts in a deck of cards, and four are already exposed, there are nine cards left that would make a flush. In other words, nine good cards.

A deck of consists of 52 cards. Six of these cards are already gone - two in your hand and four on the board. Out of the remaining 46 cards there are 37 that won't give you a flush. In other words, bad cards.

When we know this it's easy to get your hand odds: 9 good cards and 37 bad cards equal 9 to 37 hand odds, or simplified, 1 to 4.1.

This means that your odds of getting the flush is 1 to 4 - if you play the hand five times you will on average get one flush.

 

Compare Hand Odds and Pot Odds

Now we know that the odds of hitting the flush are about 1 to 4. But when you hit you will get 1 to 5 on your money. This means that you have positive expectation on a call (although you should perhaps raise since a $20 in a $80 might indicate weakness.)

 

Some Odds to Memorize

Do you have to do all these calculations every time? No, that's not necessary. When you have played for a while you will know the odds of getting a straight when you have a gut-shot straight draw or how often you will improve your two pair to a full house from turn to river.

Below you find the odds for the most common drawing situations in Texas Hold'em.

Type of Draw	No. of Outs	Odds: Flop to River	Odds: Turn to River
Flush + open straight	15	1 to 0.85 (54%)	1 to 2.1 (33%)
Flush + inside straight	12	1 to 1.2 (45%)	1 to 2.8 (26%)
Flush	9	1 to 1.9 (35%)	1 to 4.1 (19%)
Open ended straight	8	1 to 2.2 (32%)	1 to 4.7 (17%)
Set to full house (quads)	7	1 to 2.6 (28%)	1 to 5.6 (15%)
Inside straight	4	1 to 5 (17%)	1 to 10 (9%)
Pocket pair to set	2	1 to 12 (8%)	1 to 22 (4%)