Learn To Play Poker Online In Order To Make Money - Pot Odds
For most people, there are only two real reasons to play poker:
fun and profit, which are sometimes interrelated (more profit
means more fun).
But in order to make money by playing poker online, you should
always be gathering information about your opponents and, why
not, about yourself. Asides that, another vital thing is the
ability to determine, use and understand pot odds, which is one
of the most underrated concepts for beginning online poker
players. Pot odds are calculations used during a game of poker
that put the concept of risk and reward into numbers. In this
article, we provide you with an explanation of pot odds in order
to help you start using them in your game.
Whenever you are in a hand and need to decide whether or not to
call a bet, count how many cards that are still unseen that can
come on the turn and/or river that can help you. Then check the
number on the chart below to get the pot odds. For example, you
have A5s with two more of your suit on the flop. Therefore you
have 9 outs to make the nut flush. Your odds of hitting it on
the turn are 4.2 to 1 and to hit it on the turn or river 1.9 to
1. If you are only concerned about hitting it on the turn, the
pot must have at least 4.2 times the amount you must place in
the pot to make this a profitable call. If you are playing
no-limit holdem and a player has moved all-in, if there is at
least 1.9 times the amount you have to call in the pot it is a
correct call and will be profitable in the long run. Pot odds
are just a quick way of seeing if a bet will be profitable if
you are in the same situation thousands of times.
A thing that's often confusing to beginning online poker players
is that they think that the money in the pot somehow goes into
the computation of the pot odds. Actually, any money in the pot
is not yours. It was yours before you put it in the pot, but the
only way to get it back is to win the pot. This is the reason
that money you have already placed in the pot is not used in pot
odds computation.
Remember to always get your money in with the best of it and
over the long run you will be not only a winning online poker
player, but a profitable one too.