December 4, 2024 • 19 mins
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The math behind poker might not seem glamorous, but few skills will affect your bottom line more than a correct understanding of pot odds!
Upswing Poker VP Mike Brady previews the new Low Stakes Launch Pad course by sharing everything you need to build a solid foundation for understand this critical topic. You can join the Upswing Lab to access that course: https://upswingpoker.com/the-poker-lab-coaching
Audio version available on all major podcast platforms.
View the episode transcription here.
00:00 Definition and Importance of Pot Odds
02:04 Converting Pot Odds to Percentages
02:56 Three-Step Process for Calculating Pot Odds
03:56 Practical Applications of Pot Odds
06:17 Using Pot Odds with Draws
09:29 Analyzing Pot Odds for River Bets
12:50 Limitations of Pot Odds
15:19 Recognizing Situations to Avoid with Pot Odds
16:48 Additional Factors to Consider with Pot Odds
Dive into the intricacies of poker in this insightful poker strategy podcast episode focused on pot odds—a cornerstone of making profitable decisions at the table. Taken from the Low Stakes Launchpad course offered by Upswing Poker, this episode is a goldmine for players looking to sharpen their skills with actionable knowledge.
The episode begins with a clear explanation of what pot odds are and their significance in poker strategy. Through a simple three-step process, you’ll learn how to calculate pot odds, convert them into percentages, and use them to assess whether your hand is worth the call. From calculating the final pot size to understanding your “price to call,” every step is broken down into digestible insights perfect for application during live games.
This poker strategy podcast delves into practical examples, including preflop raises, facing all-ins with draws, and evaluating bets on the river. With concepts like the Rule of Two and Four for calculating draw equity and analyzing your opponent's range, listeners are guided through real-world scenarios to master pot odds in action.
But the discussion doesn’t stop at the basics. The episode highlights limitations of pot odds, such as multi-way pots and hands with poor playability on future streets. You’ll also learn about critical concepts like equity realization, implied odds, and maintaining a competitive range, ensuring you avoid common traps that even seasoned players fall into.
Perfect for poker enthusiasts and those new to the game, this poker strategy podcast is your gateway to understanding and leveraging the math behind poker for better results. If you’re ready to level up your game, tune in now, and don’t forget to explore the Low Stakes Launchpad course in the Upswing Poker Lab for a deeper dive into elite strategies.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Let's level up your poker strategy bycovering a fundamental part of the game,
pot odds. You're about to learnhow to quickly calculate pot odds,
which will help you make more profitabledecisions at the table. But first,
we have to cover what pot odds are.
This episode of Upswing Poker Level-Upwas taken directly from the new Low
Stakes Poker Crash Coursein the Upswing Lab.
(00:21):
We're making it available to Level Uplisteners because it's an important topic
and it provides a nice previewinto what this course is all about.
If you want to access thefull Low Stakes course,
head to upswingpoker.com and usecoupon code LEVELUP to get $50 off
the Upswing Lab. I'll talk moreabout it at the end of this episode.
I should note this episode will be easierto understand if you watch the video.
(00:45):
First off, what are pot odds?This definition is straight from upswingpoker.com,
pot odds are the ratio between the sizeof the total pot and the size of the
bet that you're facing.
Keep in mind that the size of thetotal pot includes any bets made in the
current round. For example,
if there's $200 in the pot and youropponent bets a hundred dollars,
(01:09):
your pot odds are three-to-onebecause there was 200 in there.
Your opponent bet a hundred, that's300 total. You have to call a hundred.
The ratio is three-to-one.
Pot odds are the mathematicalfoundation for calling situations in
poker. Without them,
we wouldn't be able to figure out whichplays are profitable and which are not.
(01:29):
Let's talk about howto calculate pot odds.
There are a few different ways to do this.
I'm about to share an easyand fast three-step process that you can actually do
at the table in areasonable amount of time.
But I've got to explainsomething important first.
As I mentioned a moment ago, pot oddsare expressed as a ratio like two-to-one,
(01:50):
three-to-one or three-to-two. But tomake pot odds more useful in-game,
you should get used to convertingyour pot odds to a percentage,
three-to-one, for example,
converts to 25%.That percentage is known as your
price to call.
Your price to call is how often youmust win the pot in order for your call
(02:12):
to break even.
So if there's $200 in the pot andyour opponent bets $100 on the river,
you are getting three-to-oneand your price to call is 25%.
That means you must have the besthand more than 25% of the time for
that call to show aprofit in the long run.
If you run a quick equitycalculation and your hand has 28%
(02:35):
versus your opponent's estimatedrange, that is a profitable call.
If you don't know how to convert aratio to a percentage, don't worry,
it's really easy.
I'll link a one-minute YouTubevideo below this that shows you how.
With that out of the way,
let's get into that easy three-stepprocess for using pot odds in-game to
make more profitable decisions.Step one,
(02:57):
calculate the final pot size ifyou were to call the current bet.
Suppose your opponent bets $100into a $300 pot on the river.
That makes the total pot $400 and ifyou were to call that a hundred dollar
bet, the final pot size would be $500.
Let's refer to that number asthe final pot. Step number two,
(03:19):
divide the size of the callby the size of the final pot.
In this case,
we divide that $100 bet thatwe're facing by the $500 final
pot. 100 divided by 500or 100 over 500 equals
0.2. Step three,
multiply by 100 to get the percentage.
(03:40):
0.2 when multiplied bya hundred equals 20,
and that means your price to callin this situation on the river is
20%. That means that when you call,
you need to win more than 20% ofthe time in order to profit by
calling.So how should you use pot odds?
What are some practical examples?
(04:01):
Pot odds are a critical factorevery time you face a bet or raise.
I'm going to go over afew examples. Number one,
you should use pot odds whenyou are facing a raise pre-flop,
especially when you are closing theaction in the big blind and you're
considering whether ornot you should defend.
Let's say the action folds to the buttonin a cash game and they raise it up to
three big blinds.
The small blind folds and you look downat seven five suited in the big blind.
(04:25):
In this case,
you have to call two big blinds and ifyou call the final pot will be 6.5 big
blinds. So we take theamount you have to call, two,
and divide it by the final pot size, 6.5,
and the result is about 0.31.Expressed as a
percentage we just multiply thatby a hundred and we get 31%.
(04:46):
Now the question is does ourseven five suited have at least
31% equity against thatbutton player's range?
Because I'm a dinosaur who has beenplaying poker for over 15 years somehow,
I'm going to use PokerStove to figure this out.
And I'm going to start by just typingin our hand, seven five suited.
And now I'm going to pop open the rangechart for the opponent and I'm going to
(05:11):
estimate what they'reraising on the button.
Now a typical button raisingrange in a cash game is about 42%.
I'm just going to type in that 42%and then adjust this a little bit so
it's missing threes and twos. I thinkmost people are going to play those hands.
Honestly, the rest ofthis range looks fine.
It's about 43% of total hands. I'm justgoing to click okay and then run the
(05:33):
equity calculation,
and the result is seven fivesuited has about 38% equity
against that button player's range.
That's well above the 31% we needed,
so this is probably a profitable call.
I say probably because there are a fewother factors that go into situations
like this, which I'm goingto cover in a few minutes.
(05:55):
I will verify right now though,
seven five suited against athree big blind button raise,
it's a profitable call.
I'm going to close down Poker Stove forthis next example. We don't need it.
Example number two is when you'refacing an all-in on the flop or turn and
you're holding a draw.
Let's say you're playing a tournamentand you're somewhat short-stacked and you
make it to the flop with six four suited.
(06:15):
Six four of hearts to be exact. The flopcomes jack of hearts, seven of hearts,
two of diamonds, pretty good flopfor you, you have a flush draw.
You check over to your opponent andthey go all-in for five and a half big
blinds into a five and a half bigblind pot. So a full pot sized all-in.
Following our steps from earlier,
we have to call 5.5 and should we call,
(06:37):
there's going to be a total of16.5 big blinds in the middle.
Our 5.5 potential callover that final pot of
16.5, equals 0.33. AKA,
you need 33% equity in orderto profitably call this all-in.
So how often will you hit your flush,
and is it at least 33% of the time?
(07:00):
There's a really useful rulefor these types of situations.
Whenever you think you knowhow many outs you have,
I recommend using the rule of twoand four. It's not quite perfect,
but it's a really good approximation.
Here's a quick summary of the rule oftwo and four. When you are on the flop,
multiply your number of outs by fourand that is the likelihood you will hit
(07:22):
one of your outs by theriver. If you're on the turn,
you multiply your number of outs by twobecause you only have one chance to hit
one of those outs. So in this case, wehave nine cards that'll give us a flush.
Any of the remaining nine hearts willcomplete our flush, and we're on the flop.
So we multiply that nine byfour. Nine times four is 36,
(07:43):
which is more than that 33%equity that we needed to call.
It is a little bit close,
so you might want to run an equitycalculation just to make sure against the
exact range you might be up against it'sa profitable call. But in-game I would
assume that this is a profitable call.
We are about 36% to hit our flush.
We only needed 33% to profitably call,
(08:07):
so we would call in this scenario.
Just to help cement this example,
let's change that two on the flop to afive. So now the flop is jack of hearts,
seven of hearts, five of diamonds,
which means we have an open-endedstraight draw along with our flush draw.
Now instead of having nine outs,
we have 15 outs to hit our hand.
(08:27):
By using the rule of two and four,
we can multiply ournumber of outs 15 by four,
and that comes out to 60% to hit our draw,
and that is obviously well above the 33%we need, so this is a slam dunk call.
This method is perfect when you'refacing an all-in because once you
call the all-in,
the action is over. You'reguaranteed to see the turn and river.
(08:49):
You can also use it whenyou're not facing an all-in,
when you're just facing a regular bet.
Just keep in mind there are other thingsthat go into that because sometimes
your opponent will bet on the turnand maybe you'll have to fold.
Which means you won'tactually see the river.
So the rule of two and fourno longer works quite as well.
It's also possible that youropponent has a better draw.
In this example maybe hehas ace five of hearts.
(09:12):
Now hitting a heart is no good for us.
So there are limitations to using therule of two and four and using pot odds to
figure out if you can call with a draw,
but it's a really good starting pointand I highly recommend getting used to
doing this if you've never thought aboutthings like this before. Example number
three of when to use pot odds is whenyou're facing a bet on the river and
(09:33):
you're considering whether or not youshould call with a hand that seems close.
For the sake of simplicity,
I'm going to skip straightto the river for this one.
Let's say you've got pocket jacksand the flop is queen of spades,
seven of spades, five of diamonds.
The turn is the two of clubs andthe river is the two of diamonds.
So there's one overcard to worryabout. If your opponent has a queen,
they have your pocket jacks beat,
(09:55):
or of course they could have a hand likea set; pocket sevens or pocket twos.
But there was a flush draw on theflop and that flush draw missed.
You check to your opponent and they gofor a bet of let's say 10 big blinds into
a 15 big blind pot. We have to call10 big blinds and the final pot is 35
big blinds. 10 dividedby 35 equals about a 29%
(10:17):
price to call in this scenario.
So we need to be good with our pocketjacks at least 29% of the time to call
profitably in this scenario.
But do we have at least 29% equity?
Let's put in our pocket jacks into PokerStove and then type in the specific
board.
I've plugged our hand pocket jacks andthe board into Poker Stove and now I'm
(10:39):
going to put in a quick estimation ofwhat I think this player's range is.
At first I'm going to be reallypessimistic about this player's range.
In other words,
I'm going to assume they have mostlystrong hands and will very rarely have a
bluff.
I've given this player a pair ofqueens with a jack kicker or better,
so ace queen, king queen, or queen jack,
(11:00):
and I've given him a handfulof missed flush draws like king
jack of spades and jack 10 of spades.I've also included a set of sevens and a
set of fives in the range,and then as far as bluffs go,
I've given him just a handful ofmissed flush draws. King jack suited,
jack ten of spades, ten nine of spades,
and all of the different nine eightcombinations for a missed straight draw.
(11:23):
And when I run this equitycalculation against this range,
pocket jacks has just 16.2% equity.
That's well under the 29% we need to call.
So if this range is accurate,
we have an easy fold here with ourpocket jacks based on our pot odds.
Now like I said, this is areally pessimistic range.
(11:43):
It's possible our opponent isbluffing far more often than this,
so I'm going to try one more range thatassumes they have a lot more missed
flush draws and we can see the difference.
Now I've given this player a lot morepotential bluffs in the form of missed
flush draws. I've included a ton ofdifferent ace high flush draws and a few
king high flush draws and we couldsee the difference in equity.
(12:04):
Now our pocket jacks has32.7% equity against this
estimated range, so if this is therange our opponent has in this spot,
we have a profitable call.
We have a great articleover on upswingpoker.com called 'How to Analyze Your
Poker Hands Effectively in Five Minutes',
and it shows you basically exactly thisprocess that I just went through where
(12:25):
you start by recording yourhands, picking tough spots,
and then you run the numbers byfirst analyzing against the optimist
range,
that's kind of the second range I didthere where you put in almost all of the
possible bluffs. Then youalso do the pessimistic range,
which is the first one we didwhere there were very few bluffs.
And then you also dothe quote realist range,
(12:46):
which is where you try to come up withthe most accurate range that the opponent
can have. The article goes on to explainhow you can use this process to really
come to solid conclusions on whether acall is profitable or not profitable.
Now that we've went over a few examples,
I want to talk about how pot odds canpotentially lead you down a losing path.
They can be kind of misleading in certainscenarios and it's because they simply
(13:10):
don't factor in everything at play.
There are a number of situations whereit might seem like your hand has enough
equity to call. You might havemore raw equity as we say,
than your price to call would require.
So maybe you need 29% equity toprofitably call and you run the
(13:30):
numbers and you have 30%.
But there could be some otherthings at play and I want to
talk about those in a coupleexamples really quick.
One extreme example is when you'redefending your big blind multi-way,
especially with kind oftrashy offsuit hands,.
Let's say someone raises to threebig blinds and then four people
call. Suppose you look down at ace twooffsuit in the big blind and then you
(13:55):
figure out your price to call.
You do the three-step process that wetalked about earlier and you discover that
you need about 13% equity toprofitably call in this scenario.
And you again look at your ace two offsuit and you think, "Hmm, I have an ace,
I only need 13% equityto call in this scenario,
this has to be an easy call.
How can I not call when I'm getting suchan amazing price?" It's really easy to
(14:17):
get sucked in when your priceto call is so low like this.
If you play live poker,
you're going to see a lot of youropponents make this exact mistake,
and they may even comment while makingthe call that they're getting such
amazing pot odds and how canthey fold. But in this case,
there's a real reason to fold. The firstreason is simply that ace two offsuit
against four other playersis really not that great.
(14:40):
If we run a quick equity calculation,
we're going to find that itdoesn't have that much equity.
But perhaps more importantly,
you won't necessarily realize allthat equity with your ace two offsuit.
You're not always going tosee the flop, turn, and river.
Equity realization is a really importantconcept that I'm going to cover in a
video or two here in the Upswing Lab.
If you're watching orlistening to this as a podcast,
(15:02):
you can just Google "equity realizationpoker" and you'll find the Upswing Poker
article about this and you can learn alittle bit more about equity realization.
But the key takeaway here is,
don't be seduced by really goodpot odds in multi-way pots,
especially when you're holdinga disconnected offsuit hand.
They just don't play well enough.Another example is when you're facing a
c-bet on the flop with a hand thatmight be the best hand right now,
(15:26):
but has really poorplayability on future streets.
An example of this mightbe in a tournament,
let's say you defend your big blind withqueen seven offsuit against the button,
and the flop comes jack threethree rainbow, all different suits.
You check to your opponent andthey bet small. In this spot,
you're going to be getting decentpot odds if they bet small.
(15:46):
You might only need to win the pot20-25% of the time to break even,
and you might look at your handqueen high, jack three three flop,
it's kind of hard to hit that.
If your opponent doesn't have ace orking high or a pair in their hand,
you have the best hand here.And you might think, "Okay,
I'm getting good pot odds,I might have the best hand,
let's call."The problem is once again,
(16:07):
you won't realize enoughequity with this hand.
You have to hit exactly a queen tobe happy with your hand on the turn.
I guess a seven wouldn'tbe too bad either.
But not too many good things canhappen on the turn and river for you,
and therefore maybe you should just getout of the way on the flop even though
your pot odds and your hand kind ofmake it seem like you should maybe call.
(16:28):
Keep an eye out for situations like thiswhere you have a hand that's going to
have really poor playability onfuture streets and don't get sucked in
just because your pot odds aredecent with hands like that.
The final thing I wantto cover really quickly,
and I'm just going tolist a few things here,
is what other factors need to beconsidered alongside pot odds?
(16:48):
If you're not watching thisin the Upswing Lab right now,
I highly recommend joiningover on upswingpoker.com.
You can use coupon code LEVELUP to get$50 off and watch this entire low stakes
course made by myself, GaryBlackwood, and Tim Jenkins.
This entire thing that we're making ismeant to help players who just want to
learn the basics in asimple, digestible way,
(17:09):
and get to the tables and be competitive.That's what this course is all about.
So again, upswingpoker.com,
use coupon code LEVELUP to get $50off and check out the Low Stakes Live
Course.
Now we're releasing this course in threeparts over the course of three months,
I hope to see you in there. By the way,
you also get access to a privateDiscord community, a private Facebook,
and literally a hundred plus other lessonsalong with preflop charts that will
(17:32):
help you upgrade your skills.By the way,
the Lab and everything else on UpswingPoker is 25% off right now during
our biggest sale of the year.We extended it for Cyber Week,
so you have until this upcoming Monday,
December 9th to get 25% off the lab,
so you can access this Low StakesLaunchpad course that we just released or
(17:53):
any other premium course ortool over on upswingpoker.com.
So go head over there, takeadvantage of that now. So anyway,
here's a list of the other importantfactors to consider with pot odds,
and if I'm missing any, pleaseleave a comment and let me know,
but these are reallygoing to be the key ones.
You need to consider your equityrealization,I've already talked about that
at-length. You need to consider yourimplied odds or your reverse implied odds,
(18:18):
and you also need to keepyour range competitive for future streets. It's really
important that by the time you reachthe turn and the river where the pot is
really big, that your range iscompetitive with your opponents.
You don't have too many junky handswhere you're always going to have to fold
like that queen seven ona jack three three board.
If you're unfamiliar with any of thoseconcepts, just give 'em a Google,
(18:38):
we probably have an UpswingPoker article about it,
or you could just join the UpswingLab and watch that low stakes course.
Thank you for watching and ifyou're already in the course,
let's go ahead and moveon to the next video.
Let's level up your poker strategy bycovering a fundamental part of the game,
pot odds. You're about to learnhow to quickly calculate pot odds,
which will help you make more profitabledecisions at the table. But first,
we have to cover what pot odds are.
This episode of Upswing Poker Level-Upwas taken directly from the new Low
Stakes Poker Crash Coursein the Upswing Lab.
(00:21):
We're making it available to Level Uplisteners because it's an important topic
and it provides a nice previewinto what this course is all about.
If you want to access thefull Low Stakes course,
head to upswingpoker.com and usecoupon code LEVELUP to get $50 off
the Upswing Lab. I'll talk moreabout it at the end of this episode.
I should note this episode will be easierto understand if you watch the video.
(00:45):
First off, what are pot odds?This definition is straight from upswingpoker.com,
pot odds are the ratio between the sizeof the total pot and the size of the
bet that you're facing.
Keep in mind that the size of thetotal pot includes any bets made in the
current round. For example,
if there's $200 in the pot and youropponent bets a hundred dollars,
(01:09):
your pot odds are three-to-onebecause there was 200 in there.
Your opponent bet a hundred, that's300 total. You have to call a hundred.
The ratio is three-to-one.
Pot odds are the mathematicalfoundation for calling situations in
poker. Without them,
we wouldn't be able to figure out whichplays are profitable and which are not.
(01:29):
Let's talk about howto calculate pot odds.
There are a few different ways to do this.
I'm about to share an easyand fast three-step process that you can actually do
at the table in areasonable amount of time.
But I've got to explainsomething important first.
As I mentioned a moment ago, pot oddsare expressed as a ratio like two-to-one,
(01:50):
three-to-one or three-to-two. But tomake pot odds more useful in-game,
you should get used to convertingyour pot odds to a percentage,
three-to-one, for example,
converts to 25%.That percentage is known as your
price to call.
Your price to call is how often youmust win the pot in order for your call
(02:12):
to break even.
So if there's $200 in the pot andyour opponent bets $100 on the river,
you are getting three-to-oneand your price to call is 25%.
That means you must have the besthand more than 25% of the time for
that call to show aprofit in the long run.
If you run a quick equitycalculation and your hand has 28%
(02:35):
versus your opponent's estimatedrange, that is a profitable call.
If you don't know how to convert aratio to a percentage, don't worry,
it's really easy.
I'll link a one-minute YouTubevideo below this that shows you how.
With that out of the way,
let's get into that easy three-stepprocess for using pot odds in-game to
make more profitable decisions.Step one,
(02:57):
calculate the final pot size ifyou were to call the current bet.
Suppose your opponent bets $100into a $300 pot on the river.
That makes the total pot $400 and ifyou were to call that a hundred dollar
bet, the final pot size would be $500.
Let's refer to that number asthe final pot. Step number two,
(03:19):
divide the size of the callby the size of the final pot.
In this case,
we divide that $100 bet thatwe're facing by the $500 final
pot. 100 divided by 500or 100 over 500 equals
0.2. Step three,
multiply by 100 to get the percentage.
(03:40):
0.2 when multiplied bya hundred equals 20,
and that means your price to callin this situation on the river is
20%. That means that when you call,
you need to win more than 20% ofthe time in order to profit by
calling.So how should you use pot odds?
What are some practical examples?
(04:01):
Pot odds are a critical factorevery time you face a bet or raise.
I'm going to go over afew examples. Number one,
you should use pot odds whenyou are facing a raise pre-flop,
especially when you are closing theaction in the big blind and you're
considering whether ornot you should defend.
Let's say the action folds to the buttonin a cash game and they raise it up to
three big blinds.
The small blind folds and you look downat seven five suited in the big blind.
(04:25):
In this case,
you have to call two big blinds and ifyou call the final pot will be 6.5 big
blinds. So we take theamount you have to call, two,
and divide it by the final pot size, 6.5,
and the result is about 0.31.Expressed as a
percentage we just multiply thatby a hundred and we get 31%.
(04:46):
Now the question is does ourseven five suited have at least
31% equity against thatbutton player's range?
Because I'm a dinosaur who has beenplaying poker for over 15 years somehow,
I'm going to use PokerStove to figure this out.
And I'm going to start by just typingin our hand, seven five suited.
And now I'm going to pop open the rangechart for the opponent and I'm going to
(05:11):
estimate what they'reraising on the button.
Now a typical button raisingrange in a cash game is about 42%.
I'm just going to type in that 42%and then adjust this a little bit so
it's missing threes and twos. I thinkmost people are going to play those hands.
Honestly, the rest ofthis range looks fine.
It's about 43% of total hands. I'm justgoing to click okay and then run the
(05:33):
equity calculation,
and the result is seven fivesuited has about 38% equity
against that button player's range.
That's well above the 31% we needed,
so this is probably a profitable call.
I say probably because there are a fewother factors that go into situations
like this, which I'm goingto cover in a few minutes.
(05:55):
I will verify right now though,
seven five suited against athree big blind button raise,
it's a profitable call.
I'm going to close down Poker Stove forthis next example. We don't need it.
Example number two is when you'refacing an all-in on the flop or turn and
you're holding a draw.
Let's say you're playing a tournamentand you're somewhat short-stacked and you
make it to the flop with six four suited.
(06:15):
Six four of hearts to be exact. The flopcomes jack of hearts, seven of hearts,
two of diamonds, pretty good flopfor you, you have a flush draw.
You check over to your opponent andthey go all-in for five and a half big
blinds into a five and a half bigblind pot. So a full pot sized all-in.
Following our steps from earlier,
we have to call 5.5 and should we call,
(06:37):
there's going to be a total of16.5 big blinds in the middle.
Our 5.5 potential callover that final pot of
16.5, equals 0.33. AKA,
you need 33% equity in orderto profitably call this all-in.
So how often will you hit your flush,
and is it at least 33% of the time?
(07:00):
There's a really useful rulefor these types of situations.
Whenever you think you knowhow many outs you have,
I recommend using the rule of twoand four. It's not quite perfect,
but it's a really good approximation.
Here's a quick summary of the rule oftwo and four. When you are on the flop,
multiply your number of outs by fourand that is the likelihood you will hit
(07:22):
one of your outs by theriver. If you're on the turn,
you multiply your number of outs by twobecause you only have one chance to hit
one of those outs. So in this case, wehave nine cards that'll give us a flush.
Any of the remaining nine hearts willcomplete our flush, and we're on the flop.
So we multiply that nine byfour. Nine times four is 36,
(07:43):
which is more than that 33%equity that we needed to call.
It is a little bit close,
so you might want to run an equitycalculation just to make sure against the
exact range you might be up against it'sa profitable call. But in-game I would
assume that this is a profitable call.
We are about 36% to hit our flush.
We only needed 33% to profitably call,
(08:07):
so we would call in this scenario.
Just to help cement this example,
let's change that two on the flop to afive. So now the flop is jack of hearts,
seven of hearts, five of diamonds,
which means we have an open-endedstraight draw along with our flush draw.
Now instead of having nine outs,
we have 15 outs to hit our hand.
(08:27):
By using the rule of two and four,
we can multiply ournumber of outs 15 by four,
and that comes out to 60% to hit our draw,
and that is obviously well above the 33%we need, so this is a slam dunk call.
This method is perfect when you'refacing an all-in because once you
call the all-in,
the action is over. You'reguaranteed to see the turn and river.
(08:49):
You can also use it whenyou're not facing an all-in,
when you're just facing a regular bet.
Just keep in mind there are other thingsthat go into that because sometimes
your opponent will bet on the turnand maybe you'll have to fold.
Which means you won'tactually see the river.
So the rule of two and fourno longer works quite as well.
It's also possible that youropponent has a better draw.
In this example maybe hehas ace five of hearts.
(09:12):
Now hitting a heart is no good for us.
So there are limitations to using therule of two and four and using pot odds to
figure out if you can call with a draw,
but it's a really good starting pointand I highly recommend getting used to
doing this if you've never thought aboutthings like this before. Example number
three of when to use pot odds is whenyou're facing a bet on the river and
(09:33):
you're considering whether or not youshould call with a hand that seems close.
For the sake of simplicity,
I'm going to skip straightto the river for this one.
Let's say you've got pocket jacksand the flop is queen of spades,
seven of spades, five of diamonds.
The turn is the two of clubs andthe river is the two of diamonds.
So there's one overcard to worryabout. If your opponent has a queen,
they have your pocket jacks beat,
(09:55):
or of course they could have a hand likea set; pocket sevens or pocket twos.
But there was a flush draw on theflop and that flush draw missed.
You check to your opponent and they gofor a bet of let's say 10 big blinds into
a 15 big blind pot. We have to call10 big blinds and the final pot is 35
big blinds. 10 dividedby 35 equals about a 29%
(10:17):
price to call in this scenario.
So we need to be good with our pocketjacks at least 29% of the time to call
profitably in this scenario.
But do we have at least 29% equity?
Let's put in our pocket jacks into PokerStove and then type in the specific
board.
I've plugged our hand pocket jacks andthe board into Poker Stove and now I'm
(10:39):
going to put in a quick estimation ofwhat I think this player's range is.
At first I'm going to be reallypessimistic about this player's range.
In other words,
I'm going to assume they have mostlystrong hands and will very rarely have a
bluff.
I've given this player a pair ofqueens with a jack kicker or better,
so ace queen, king queen, or queen jack,
(11:00):
and I've given him a handfulof missed flush draws like king
jack of spades and jack 10 of spades.I've also included a set of sevens and a
set of fives in the range,and then as far as bluffs go,
I've given him just a handful ofmissed flush draws. King jack suited,
jack ten of spades, ten nine of spades,
and all of the different nine eightcombinations for a missed straight draw.
(11:23):
And when I run this equitycalculation against this range,
pocket jacks has just 16.2% equity.
That's well under the 29% we need to call.
So if this range is accurate,
we have an easy fold here with ourpocket jacks based on our pot odds.
Now like I said, this is areally pessimistic range.
(11:43):
It's possible our opponent isbluffing far more often than this,
so I'm going to try one more range thatassumes they have a lot more missed
flush draws and we can see the difference.
Now I've given this player a lot morepotential bluffs in the form of missed
flush draws. I've included a ton ofdifferent ace high flush draws and a few
king high flush draws and we couldsee the difference in equity.
(12:04):
Now our pocket jacks has32.7% equity against this
estimated range, so if this is therange our opponent has in this spot,
we have a profitable call.
We have a great articleover on upswingpoker.com called 'How to Analyze Your
Poker Hands Effectively in Five Minutes',
and it shows you basically exactly thisprocess that I just went through where
(12:25):
you start by recording yourhands, picking tough spots,
and then you run the numbers byfirst analyzing against the optimist
range,
that's kind of the second range I didthere where you put in almost all of the
possible bluffs. Then youalso do the pessimistic range,
which is the first one we didwhere there were very few bluffs.
And then you also dothe quote realist range,
(12:46):
which is where you try to come up withthe most accurate range that the opponent
can have. The article goes on to explainhow you can use this process to really
come to solid conclusions on whether acall is profitable or not profitable.
Now that we've went over a few examples,
I want to talk about how pot odds canpotentially lead you down a losing path.
They can be kind of misleading in certainscenarios and it's because they simply
(13:10):
don't factor in everything at play.
There are a number of situations whereit might seem like your hand has enough
equity to call. You might havemore raw equity as we say,
than your price to call would require.
So maybe you need 29% equity toprofitably call and you run the
(13:30):
numbers and you have 30%.
But there could be some otherthings at play and I want to
talk about those in a coupleexamples really quick.
One extreme example is when you'redefending your big blind multi-way,
especially with kind oftrashy offsuit hands,.
Let's say someone raises to threebig blinds and then four people
call. Suppose you look down at ace twooffsuit in the big blind and then you
(13:55):
figure out your price to call.
You do the three-step process that wetalked about earlier and you discover that
you need about 13% equity toprofitably call in this scenario.
And you again look at your ace two offsuit and you think, "Hmm, I have an ace,
I only need 13% equityto call in this scenario,
this has to be an easy call.
How can I not call when I'm getting suchan amazing price?" It's really easy to
(14:17):
get sucked in when your priceto call is so low like this.
If you play live poker,
you're going to see a lot of youropponents make this exact mistake,
and they may even comment while makingthe call that they're getting such
amazing pot odds and how canthey fold. But in this case,
there's a real reason to fold. The firstreason is simply that ace two offsuit
against four other playersis really not that great.
(14:40):
If we run a quick equity calculation,
we're going to find that itdoesn't have that much equity.
But perhaps more importantly,
you won't necessarily realize allthat equity with your ace two offsuit.
You're not always going tosee the flop, turn, and river.
Equity realization is a really importantconcept that I'm going to cover in a
video or two here in the Upswing Lab.
If you're watching orlistening to this as a podcast,
(15:02):
you can just Google "equity realizationpoker" and you'll find the Upswing Poker
article about this and you can learn alittle bit more about equity realization.
But the key takeaway here is,
don't be seduced by really goodpot odds in multi-way pots,
especially when you're holdinga disconnected offsuit hand.
They just don't play well enough.Another example is when you're facing a
c-bet on the flop with a hand thatmight be the best hand right now,
(15:26):
but has really poorplayability on future streets.
An example of this mightbe in a tournament,
let's say you defend your big blind withqueen seven offsuit against the button,
and the flop comes jack threethree rainbow, all different suits.
You check to your opponent andthey bet small. In this spot,
you're going to be getting decentpot odds if they bet small.
(15:46):
You might only need to win the pot20-25% of the time to break even,
and you might look at your handqueen high, jack three three flop,
it's kind of hard to hit that.
If your opponent doesn't have ace orking high or a pair in their hand,
you have the best hand here.And you might think, "Okay,
I'm getting good pot odds,I might have the best hand,
let's call."The problem is once again,
(16:07):
you won't realize enoughequity with this hand.
You have to hit exactly a queen tobe happy with your hand on the turn.
I guess a seven wouldn'tbe too bad either.
But not too many good things canhappen on the turn and river for you,
and therefore maybe you should just getout of the way on the flop even though
your pot odds and your hand kind ofmake it seem like you should maybe call.
(16:28):
Keep an eye out for situations like thiswhere you have a hand that's going to
have really poor playability onfuture streets and don't get sucked in
just because your pot odds aredecent with hands like that.
The final thing I wantto cover really quickly,
and I'm just going tolist a few things here,
is what other factors need to beconsidered alongside pot odds?
(16:48):
If you're not watching thisin the Upswing Lab right now,
I highly recommend joiningover on upswingpoker.com.
You can use coupon code LEVELUP to get$50 off and watch this entire low stakes
course made by myself, GaryBlackwood, and Tim Jenkins.
This entire thing that we're making ismeant to help players who just want to
learn the basics in asimple, digestible way,
(17:09):
and get to the tables and be competitive.That's what this course is all about.
So again, upswingpoker.com,
use coupon code LEVELUP to get $50off and check out the Low Stakes Live
Course.
Now we're releasing this course in threeparts over the course of three months,
I hope to see you in there. By the way,
you also get access to a privateDiscord community, a private Facebook,
and literally a hundred plus other lessonsalong with preflop charts that will
(17:32):
help you upgrade your skills.By the way,
the Lab and everything else on UpswingPoker is 25% off right now during
our biggest sale of the year.We extended it for Cyber Week,
so you have until this upcoming Monday,
December 9th to get 25% off the lab,
so you can access this Low StakesLaunchpad course that we just released or
(17:53):
any other premium course ortool over on upswingpoker.com.
So go head over there, takeadvantage of that now. So anyway,
here's a list of the other importantfactors to consider with pot odds,
and if I'm missing any, pleaseleave a comment and let me know,
but these are reallygoing to be the key ones.
You need to consider your equityrealization,I've already talked about that
at-length. You need to consider yourimplied odds or your reverse implied odds,
(18:18):
and you also need to keepyour range competitive for future streets. It's really
important that by the time you reachthe turn and the river where the pot is
really big, that your range iscompetitive with your opponents.
You don't have too many junky handswhere you're always going to have to fold
like that queen seven ona jack three three board.
If you're unfamiliar with any of thoseconcepts, just give 'em a Google,
(18:38):
we probably have an UpswingPoker article about it,
or you could just join the UpswingLab and watch that low stakes course.
Thank you for watching and ifyou're already in the course,
let's go ahead and moveon to the next video.
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