Hand Odds & Pot Odds

ks4be · #1 02-13-2003, 08:14 PM

I'm a newbe, is there a good book on Hand Odds that gives a good understandable explanation of the odds of the card you need to come up on the turn or river. And is there a book that explains Pot Odds and how to use hand odds with the pot odds to know if I should continue the hand. Hopefully they are one and the same book. Thanks for any help you can give me.

JayKon · #2 02-16-2003, 02:58 AM

It hardly seems like enough material for an entire book. Just get a copy of HPFAP from 2+2. There are a couple of pages in the back that talk about it. Before you get there, you really need a better understanding of pre-flop hand selection - covered very nicely in HPFAP. Pot-odds don't really come into play until the flop (well, mostly). Once there, you're concerned with the number of unseen cards that will make your hand, without making a better hand for someone else.

For example, you have KsJs and the flop is: Qh Th 2d.

Any A, or 9 will give you a straight (8 outs), but the Ah, 9h may make someone a flush, thus reducing the straights value (and the nut outs to 6).

Figuring just for the turn 8 cards out of 47 unseen cards (8/47) = .17, or in odds about 1 in 5. So, if someone bets, there needs to be at least 5 times as much money in the pot as the amount to call for you to have the immediate odds. However, for the nut hand, only (6/47) = .12, or about 1 in 8. Same logic applies.

This ignores the implied odds and what happend on the turn, paired boards, etc.

Hope this helps,
Jay

BTW, from HPFAP (1988) pp. 179

If you hold a wired pair, you will flop three of a kind, or better 11.8% of the time. If you hold AK, you will flop at least one A, or one K 32.4% of the time. ...

If you hold two suited cards, you will flop a flush 0.8% and a four-flush 10.9% of the time ...

(it goes on)

JayKon · #3 02-16-2003, 03:16 AM

Here is a small chart with the precide odds, given a number of outs. To read it, you'll have to clean up the spacing a little. Its in Courier and the posts seem to use Arial.

turn turn river river t/r t/r
Outs (%) (X:1) (%) (X:1) (%) (X:1)
-------------------------------------------------------------
15 31.9 2.13 32.6 2.07 54.1 0.85
14 29.8 2.36 30.4 2.28 51.2 0.96
13 27.7 2.62 28.3 2.54 48.1 1.08
12 25.5 2.92 26.1 2.83 45.0 1.22
11 23.4 3.27 23.9 3.18 41.7 1.40
10 21.3 3.70 21.7 3.60 38.4 1.61
9 19.1 4.22 19.6 4.11 35.0 1.86
8 17.0 4.88 17.4 4.75 31.5 2.18
7 14.9 5.71 15.2 5.57 27.8 2.59
6 12.8 6.83 13.0 6.67 24.1 3.14
5 10.6 8.40 10.9 8.20 20.4 3.91
4 8.5 10.75 8.7 10.50 16.5 5.07
3 6.4 14.67 6.5 14.33 12.5 7.01
2 4.3 22.50 4.3 22.00 08.4 10.88
1 2.1 46.00 2.2 45.00 04.3 22.50