Poker Education

I introduced the subject of pot odds in my first post, and now I’m going to build on that concept and talk about implied odds. As we talked about in the first entry, bankroll management is so critical when it comes to the game of poker because sometimes you’ll find yourself in spots in which you’ll be forced to call a bet when you’re on a draw. The poker odds table proved that it’s a given you’ll lose a fair number of these pots, and at times it’s tough to avoid these them even if you’re using solely strong Texas Hold Em hands preflop. When we discuss implied odds, there will be a similar theme: we’re almost always putting our money in behind. With pot odds we do it because it’s mathematically correct. With implied odds we do it because of future expectation.

To see what I mean, let’s go back to the example of flopping a flush draw from the last entry. We were playing a tournament on a Full Tilt Poker download and we flopped a flush draw. This time, though, imagine that our opponent just raises 600 more rather than all his chips. We saw in the last entry that we can only call raises that are less than 500 chips to have the pot odds to call, so this appears to be a bad deal for us. However, everything changes depending on how many chips are remaining in his stack if we know that there is no way he’s folding on later streets. In this example, let’s say he has 1,000 chips behind. For simplicity, we will also assume that he will check the turn. This sets up a situation in which it becomes correct to calculate implied odds rather than pot odds. Since we know that he’s going to either bet or call his remaining 1,000 chips on the river, you can consider that the pot is 2,000 rather than 1,000. 600 to call divided by 2,000 in the implied pot gives you 0.30, and since you’ll hit your flush around 33% of the time, the call is profitable here.

So far you’ve seen that with a poker odds chart you can figure out pot odds and implied odds, and together they can give you a huge edge at the table. An inexperienced individual could potentially lose money in a couple different ways with a draw after the flop. One option is that he might call with incorrect pot odds while on a draw, and without any implied odds, this is a losing play in the long run. Or maybe he knows about pot odds but doesn’t understand implied odds, so in another situation he’ll fold when he actually has the implied odds to call. MTT poker and cash games alike require you to utilize both pot odds and implied odds to make as much money as possible when you have draws.

Before I finish off, I’d just like to advise you to be a bit careful with this new knowledge. Occasionally those new to the game begin calling with anything and everything when they learn about implied odds because they assume that the odds are always there. When you’re counting future bets, you must be absolutely sure that you are actually going to get them. Let’s pretend that you’re receiving poker hands in one of the US poker rooms and you make a set on the turn, but it appears it completed a flush draw for your opponent. You start calculating your implied odds when he raises because the only way you can win this hand is by hitting a full house on the river. Some players won’t go all the way with a flush on a paired board, and you must consider this when you’re calculating your implied odds. If you assume that you’ll get paid off when you actually won’t, you’re going to make a lot of incorrect calls which will severely hurt your bottom line in the long run.