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Strategy: Pot Odds
August 18, 2008 - Shaun Appleton
(Credit: ian of leam) 
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In their very simplest form pot-odds can be likened to the odds you get when sports betting. In poker you will be offered a variety of odds to call a bet and also offer different odds to your opponent. For example with no cards to come and a pot totaling $45 you are the last to act – it will cost you just $5 to call the last bet so you are being offered pot-odds of 9-to-1. Whether you call this last bet (assuming you decided not to raise!) is determined by whether you think you will win the pot more than once in every 9 times that you call.
Pot-odds are also used to assess whether to make a call with more cards to come. For example you hold 10-Jack and the flop comes 3-Queen-King. You feel that your opponent holds a king and nothing else and know that any ace or 9 on the turn or river will make you the best hand. With 8 winning cards out of 47 unseen cards on the turn you are just over 4.3/1 to make the best hand.
Your knowledge of outs can then be combined with the pot-odds on offer. If the pot is offering you more than this price then your call will make money over time – if less you will lose money over time, whatever the outcome of the current hand.
Now let's say you have Ace King verses a low pocket pair, you miss the flop, so you have 6 outs (6 cards will help you 3 aces and 3 kings). This means you have about a 13% chance of hitting on the next card. If the pot is $90 and you must call $10, you should call, because you have more than a 10% chance to hit ($10 / $100). However, if the bet to you is $20, you should fold, because that would require a 18.2% chance of hitting ($20 / $110).
This takes a bit of time to really understand, but once you have done it over a period of time then it will come to you as second nature.
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