Let’s face it, this is the question on every online poker player’s mind, pretty much all the time.
According to the fundamental theorem of poker, you have to play every hand as if you were able to see the hole-cards of your opponents. Whenever you play hands differently than how you would have, provided you saw his/her cards, you lose money.
Of course, that goal is not attainable. What you really have to do is go for positive EV situations. The expected value will tell you exactly which hands you have to act on and which ones you have to muck.
The easiest way to come to a decision regarding a hand as quickly as possible is to compare the pot odds to the likeliness of making the hand you’re hoping for. If the latter is better than the former you should make the call (or raise if the proportionality between the two types of odds requires it), if not, you should muck it.
A classic example would be the four-card flush, with the flop on the table. If the guy in front of you raised $10 into a $40 pot, you would have to make the call. If the pot were bigger than $40, it would be an even better call.
The pot odds that you’d get on the $50 pot would be 5-1. The odds of you making the 9-outer, (which the four-card flush is) are 4,66-1. These are better than the pot odds, so the call is justified.
You need to be able to assess situations like this lightning fast. One way to do it is to calculate your outers as fast as you can. Be careful with this part, because the number of outs might be bigger than you’d think. Often times, you’re on a flush draw, but in the same time there’s a straight in the making too. Don’t forget to add those cards to your outs. You could be looking for a flush, a straight or a three of a kind: again, don’t be blinded by the most obvious opportunity. To calculate your odds properly you need to consider ALL your outs.
One more important thing to consider about the method I presented above is the following: the expected value that you calculate in the above example is only for the turn card. You might as well make your flush on the river if the turn misses you. In order to get a more accurate description of your odds, you need to calculate effective odds. This is basically done by re-calculating your pot odds according to the money that is likely to be in the pot for the river, and the money that you’ll have to contribute. Add up your pot odds and the odds of making your hand on each of the two remaining cards and you have your effective odds.
Other than the types of odds discussed, there are implied odds as well. You get such odds for small pairs. Calculating implied odds though is a more complicated issue I’ll address in a different article.
Beside the above named factors you also have to consider that sometime you might end up outdrawn, even if you do make your hand. To that end, the ability to read your opponents’ betting patterns is extremely important. Factor in the rake as well as the rakeback deal that you’re playing with.
Jim Jackson is an online poker and rakeback site owner, with articles published on hundreds of websites and in a few live publications.
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