Is poker luck or skill? That’s the endless debate. For many new and free online poker games players who don’t know what they’re doing it’s luck.

For players with skill it is about skill and, an important part of that skill-set requires the ability to use some simple math in your game and basically “make your own luck”. We’re talking of course about pot odds, implied odds and rounding.

Pot Odds refer to the quantity of chips that sit on the center of the table because of bets, call, raises etc. The sum of all those chips represents the size of the present pot.

For example – There are 400 chips in the pot and you are considering a call of a 100 chip bet. This means you have Pot Odds of 4 to 1, that is, the 400 chips in the pot divided by the 100 chips that you need to bet.

Implied Odds
Relate to the number of chips that are stacked in front of your competitors stacks in the current hand, plus the number of chips that are in the current pot. For example, you and 2 other players are left in a hand.

Player A has 2,000 chips and Player B 3,000 chips. The pot has 1,000 chips. Should you need to call a 400 chip bet this means you have Implied Odds of 15 to 1. This results from the 6,000 chips total held by the 2 other players and the pot versus the 400 chips you would need to use.

Rounding – Making Life A lot easier
When you get your 2 pocket cards, 50 cards remain unseen so you will use 50 as the basis. We will not bother about there being 47 unseen cards post flop and 46 post turn. We stick with 50, it is close enough and makes life a lot easier.

Example – You get King/Queen unsuited, and the flop shows Ten, Jack, Four rainbow (an unsuited flop). This means there 8 ‘outs’ to an open end straight draw; the four 9′s and four Aces that we haven’t seen.

So there is an 8 in 50 chance of catching an ‘out’ on the turn; and, 8 in 50 which equates to 16 in 100, a 16% chance of hitting our desired straight on the turn, basically 1 in 6 chance.

In this situation to break even in terms of probability you need a minimum of 5 to 1 Pot Odds for there to be any sense in playing for the 9′s or Aces. But 5 to 1 Pot Odds vs the 1 in 6 chance only makes you dead even long term.

You should always be looking for an advantage with every bet. If 5 to 1 is dead even, then 7 to 1 is a 40% advantage, 9 to 1 a 80% advantage. As a rule, if you have a good Pot Odds advantage play it, for me 45% is my comfort level but you may find yours to be more or less, only game time will tell you what your OK level is.

However, playing advantage only Pot Odds hands on their own won’t give you big success. The beatings that you will put on both the bad and good players come from timely use of Implied Odds which can be many times more powerful than Pot Odds.

In the situation above, 5-1 Pot Odds dictated we should fold. But what if you are playing against some crazy donk with a stack much larger than the pot? If we have hit the our open ended draw with any 9 or Ace at the Turn or River we’ll knock such a player out and take all his chips.

So you should consider the Implied Odds as well as the Pot Odds while being sure you don’t take excessive risks. Should the Pot Odds be respectable, and by this I mean within 25% of acceptable then it’s good to go for it, but do practice on free poker games first! I hope this guide to implied odds was useful, see NoPayPOKER.com for more free online poker games training lessons.

1. Poker Free Online Games Easy Guide To Pot Odds And Implied Odds
2. Guide to Poker Pot Odds in Free Poker Games
3. Free Poker Guides – A Basic Guide to Texas Hold Em Poker Games
4. Poker Free Online Games Coaching Guide To How To Value Bet Featuring A Pro Game Hand Example
5. Free Poker Online Guide Asks Do You Need All That Math Stuff To Win Poker?

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