Poker is an extremely challenging game although typically perceived as a game of pure, dumb luck the reality is that there is a great deal of skill involved as well. You will be hard pressed to find a game that incorporates as many different variables as poker does, and in order for a player to grow and develop, he must be able to maintain a safe balance between these different variables. A poker player who is intimately aware of the methods for calculating odds and thus betting accordingly, will find that he will still more often than not if he is unable to maintain his composure. Likewise, a poker player who is able to keep a stony face and never reveal his emotions or current state of mind will not really break into the big league if he does not know how to bet sensibly.

One of the most fundamental, and ironically, the most commonly misunderstood and wrongly applied skills in poker is the ability to effectively, speedily and accurately determine the pot odds. Many novice players will claim that they actually understand how this is calculated, in reality they don't, and a common excuse proffered in way of justification for this woeful state of affairs is: "I want to play a game, and not spend half of my life learning complex mathematics!"

If you want to be serious about playing poker then you will need to reconcile yourself to the fact that it will be necessary to perform some mathematical calculations although some small comfort can be derived from the fact that such computations are invariably short and sweet, requiring little more than basic arithmetic abilities.

Calculating pot odds is nothing more fancy other than a calculation of the odds of reward versus the odds of risk and the beauty of calculating pot odds is that if you familarise yourself with the basic technique, you will be able to apply it in every single poker game!

The figures used in the calculation of pot odds are very straightforward: size of the current pot (total amount of money a player can win) versus the amount of money that they are required to wager in return for a chance to win the pot. Therefore, if you must bet a minimum of $10 and there is a current pot valued at $100 the pot odds would be

100:10 or when divided by the lowest common denominator, 10:1

Many people however, do not like relying solely upon the ratio, and so much prefer to convert the figures into a percentage in order for them to more easily determine whether it is a good bet or not.

In order to obtain the percentage value then, we need to add together the size of the pot and the cost of the minimum wager, and then obtain that total figure. We then divide the cost of the minimum wager with the value of the total figure.

Learn more about this author, Tony Narloch.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about Beginner's guide to poker?
We want to hear your view. Write now!