How to Quickly Calculate Pot Odds and the Probability of Hitting your Outs? 

I'm glad I could help, Donovan! My pleasure :)

Ii

thanks, I'm glad to hear it

1) does it matter? this is just a made up hand to showcase the concept of pot odds 2) watch the video again please - why is it called the rule of 4 & 2?

@@GokuPoker Thank you! I watched again... please let me know if I got it right... You must calculate outs at the flop and again at the turn. Outs may change... especially if you need 2 out cards to win, as in the case of the flop having a 9 of clubs instead of diamonds, in your example. If by the turn you don't get another diamonds with the 9 at the flop being clubs, all outs for flush go away. Might you share the math that converts 15 outs to 60 percent? Why does outs times 4 equal odds of winning? Why at the turn do odds of winning get halved? Is it because you have fewer remaining cards to be dealt an out card you need? I would love to know the math behind it. Last question... suppose the river was not an 8. Would you have folded or bluffed and why did you choose 70% of the pot as the bet?

good tip Nissar, thanks!

My pleasure Jeff! Thanks for the comment :)

yes, thank you, great eye Gianluca! I messed up the text and wrote 2 hundred instead of a 100. I say the right number (1 hundred) but the text is wrong (2 hundred), all the calculations are right for the bet of 100 (the first sentence "your opponent bets 200" should read "your opponents bets 100" instead) - sorry about the confusion!

in this case you do not count jacks and tens as outs because "you assume that your opponent has at least a pair of queens" 2:53

my pleasure Chevon :)

my pleasure, thanks for the comment - any money that you have already put into the pot is no longer your money. It's now the pot and you do not take it into account (in any special way because you are actually taking it into account as it is the pot) when calculating pot odds - you are only calculating pot odds for the current decision regardless of what happened earlier. So your pot odds are indeed 3 to 1 and you need to win at least 25% of the time to make money on this particular decision. Poker is a series of decisions and the better decisions you make on average versus the decisions of your opponents, the more money you make.

@@GokuPoker gotcha. Thanks for the reply! Pretty new to poker and just trying to get into the right mindset when considering any odds.

@@chrisk1176 good luck and have fun - poker is an awesome game ;)

yes, you are right, good eye Nicholas! I messed up the text and wrote 200 instead of a 100. I say it correctly in 4:45 and it's just a text glitch, all the calculations are right for the bet of 100 (the first sentence "your opponent bets 200" should read "your opponents bets 100" instead) - sorry about the confusion! if it was indeed a bet of 200 to the pot of 200, you'd be getting 2:1 odds and you'd need 33% to break even and the call with 30% probability would be losing money.

I don't know what you are talking about - the 4 and 2 rule is a good estimation of the probability of hitting your outs. Of course, you don't know if you will see the river card, but that's just another factor in your decision making. I think you're trying to complicate something that is super easy to understand - remember this is content for beginners. Simple, actionable tips that help you get started with poker and start winning on micro stakes. If you actually start playing, you will soon outgrow them and get a better understanding, but if you know nothing about poker, you need simple guidance - not unnecessarily complicated.

no, preflop you take into consideration mostly hand ranges and positions - outs are considered only when you have a draw. You can use a tool like equilab to see what kind of equity certain hands or ranges have against each other e.g. AA vs 72o is 88.2% vs 11.8% preflop.

thanks Happy! This is just an example to illustrate pot odds, but it makes sense - the villain bets half pot on the flop and on the turn, then checks to you on the river. Depending on how well you know the opponent you can bet anywhere from like 30% to 150%. I guess vs a random player betting 60-80% of the pot in that spot will have the biggest EV.

@@GokuPoker it does make sense now that i think about it

yeah I know what you mean. It's hard at first and it takes a long time, but you get better at it with practice and eventually it becomes second nature. You don't really wanna use calculators, because then you will not improve on your quick counting abilities and they are very important when playing poker, especially live. What you can do is just try to figure out a quick estimate. You don't need to focus on the exact numbers. Often times it's enough for you to just know roughly what your odds are. For example when you're facing a bet of 123 and the pot is 136, you can just round those numbers up to 120 to 260(pot+your opponent's bet), 26/12 is more than 2,1 but less than 2,2 so your odds are roughly 2,1 to 1 and you need to win at least 1/3,1 times so you need roughly 32% equity. I think the best way is to just be kind to yourself and practice and you'll see improvement in your quick counting very soon. Also I think practicing long division on paper will definately help, because you need to be very good at it so that you can do it in your head, when you're playing.

Thanks, I never thought of rounding.

No, it applies no matter the situation - you use it to estimate your probability of hitting your outs on later streets. If you wanted to estimate the probability of hitting your outs on just the turn, then yes, you can do it multiplying the number of outs by 2. But I have no idea why you would want to do that, in poker you need to play to win. If you have 15 outs on the flop, you want to play the hand like you're holding the nuts no matter if you hit your hand or not. If you plan on only betting big when you hit your hand, any thinking player will realize that very quickly and they will run you over.

you can actually see all these outs on the screen at 3:19 so you tell me why it isn't 17 outs. The rule of 2 and 4 is meant to simplify things for you, but of course if you know some cards (you always know at least your hole cards), you can count it more precisely - but I wouldn't focus in that. You only need a rough estimation to make a decision and you need to be able to make this decision fairly quickly.

Thank you, im not kidding with this unique dyslexia thing, i have to be able to SEE things, perfect response to my question, thank you.

you will be able to estimate that once you gain skill and experience - but before that, it is enough that you understand pot odds and know that if your pot odds are 4 to 1, you need to win at least 1 out of 5 times to make profit

1/221=0.0045248868778281 so ~ 0.45%

Thanks for reply, Wow! Less than half a percent, no wonder i get mad when theyget cracked!

@@shivasirons6159 everyone does but it's poker

you tell me and I'll confirm if you got it right

Im not trying to be a wiseguy , i have a unique form of dyslexia and to understand concepts its very helpful to exagerate examples.

@@shivasirons6159 I was serious - tell me what the pot odds are if your opponent bets 5k to a pot of a 100 and I'll confirm it - you learn best by practicing

yes, you are correct Sriram, the probability of being dealt a pocket pair as in ANY pocket pair is 3/51 so ~5,88% and the probability of being dealt a specific pocket pair as in AA, KK or 22 if that's what you want to be dealt is 1/221 so ~0,45% so you'll get one out of 13 possible pocket pairs ~6% of the time but a specific pocket pair like KK 0,45% of the time does that make sense?

That makes sense. Thanks for clarifying.

my pleasure sir :)

sure I agree most pots don't make it to the river, but if you want to make optimal decisions, you need to take into account all factors and possibilities - please take a look at my comments exchange with SoccerNurds below. And to make it clear, if you're counting the probability of hitting your outs, my advice for beginner players is to use the rule of 4 and 2 just like I explained in the video.

Goku Poker I hear you, I just can’t agree w that idea. I almost never chase straights or sets after the flop. That is to say, if I don’t have a made hand on the flop or a flush +straight draw, I’m not thinking about calling or reraising, let alone trying to figure out my chances by the river. No need to, I’m not chasing an open ended straight draw post-flop w a half pot sized bet thrown at me. That’s a losing strategy. So, the idea that I should regularly try to calculate my chances flop to river is nonsensical.

so I understand you play very tight and are willing to go broke only with the nuts - do you think this kind of strategy is easy to exploit by thinking players or is it hard to exploit? I think it all boils down to whether you want to get better at poker and move up the stakes - I guess the way you're playing now allows you to win at small stakes, but you need to understand that at the highest stakes EVERYTHING matters because the edges are so small. So my advice for you would be to definitely start thinking about calling or reraising with weaker than made hands or monster draws and try to at least do that a small % of the time at the beginning - this is when knowing your chances will help you, because it's always better to bluff or semi-bluff with hands that have some equity. Sure chasing an open ender post-flop with a half pot sized bet thrown at you isn't a good idea, if your only plan for the hand is to either hit and bet or miss and fold, but if you add in the possibility of sometimes betting when you miss, or betting when certain cards fall, or betting when it's checked to you, it all of a sudden starts making sense to call that half pot bet on the flop or even reraise it. Your goal when playing should be to make such decisions that your opponents cannot easily tell the strength of your hand and to do that you need to be well balanced. If you're always getting to the river with the nuts and never with other hands, it's easy to just never pay you off when you bet the river. Just some thoughts, hope it helps.

Goku Poker I suppose you have some good points there. I just feel so naked when my bluffs and half-bluffs get called on the flop. Not talking about small ball either, ya know, where we keep stabbing at pots post-flop all the time and take most of them down bc everyone else is usually afraid. I’m talking about when we get called with our little draws or AK on a small rainbow flop. It’s like, you got called, the turn is a brick, now what? That’s when fear overwhelms me, and that’s where my opposition to the 4-2 rule comes from. Looking at several poker calculators it just doesn’t add up, so I always go w the 2-2 rule. It makes me somehow more comfortable, but maybe it’s all in my head.

yeah I know exactly what you mean, I guess it's a natural progression of most poker players, you start off playing really tight and not really bluffing much other than continuation bets, then when you try to bluff more, you get into all kinds of weird and scary spots, where you don't really know what to do, but that's normal. You've gotta go through all that and analyze your spots to learn from mistakes and do more of what's working. Poker is an awesome game and the more you play, the better you get. So just practice more with the intention of improving your game and don't worry if it feels uncomfortable at first and your win rate will definitely get worse for a while there, but once you get through this initial phase you'll see huge improvements in your game really soon. Hope you have a great time at the tables man!

yeah, you are totally right, I messed up the text and wrote 200 instead of a 100. I say it right in 4:45 and it's just a text glitch, all the calculations are right and the odds are 3:1, only the first sentence "your opponent bets 200" should read "your opponents bets 100" instead. Thank you very much for pointing that out and I'm sorry about it!

😍😍😍

That's correct Allons, thanks a lot for pointing it out! At 3:11 I was supposed to say 'two of these are an 8 and a king', not a 4, yes.