Is poker luck or skill? That’s the endless debate. For many new and free online poker 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 relate to the number of chips that sit on the middle of the board due to bets, call, raises etc. The sum of all those chips is the size of the current 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. Lets say you and 2 players are still 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 comes from the 6,000 chips total between the 2 other players and 1000 in the pot vs the 400 chips you 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. You don’t need to worry that this changes to 47 unseen post flop, 46 post turn etc. We’ll stick with 50, it’s near enough and makes the math so much more easy.

For example – You have a King Queen unsuited as your pockets, and the flop is 10, Jack, 4 rainbow (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.

This means there’s an 8 in 50 probability of getting an ‘out’ on the turn; this equals 16 in 100, 16% or in other words a 1 in 6 chance of a card we want coming up.

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, it’s not Pot Odds that are going to result in ultimate success. For big success and to beta up on both good and bad players requires timely application of Implied Odds which, at the right time, can be a lot more powerful than simple Pot Odds.

In the example used above, Pot Odds may dictated we 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 pot odds was useful, see NoPayPOKER.com for more free poker online training lessons.

1. Free Poker Online Games Basic Guide To Implied Odds And Pot Odds
2. Guide to Poker Pot Odds in Free Poker Games
3. Poker Free Online Games Coaching Guide To How To Value Bet Featuring A Pro Game Hand Example
4. Free Poker Online Guide Asks Do You Need All That Math Stuff To Win Poker?
5. Free Online Poker Guide To What You Need To Do To Win Hyper-Hard Poker Games In 2012

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