Outs and Odds

The Three Odds in Poker

Poker is an odds game. Most players know about the card odds and they base a big chunk of their judgements on them. But professionals also consider two other odds during a game. They know that card odds alone does not give them an edge over their opponents especially in the long run. And these two other odds are investment and edge odds. Investment odds considers potential winnings and lose of money, while edge odds evaluates the relative performance of each player.

Card Odds

The card odds are the probability a player assesses on drawing hands. These are the odds discussed by poker books all the time. To sum this up, with 52 cards in the deck, there are 2,598,960 different poker hands. Now if a player is dealt with 100,000 hands in his lifetime, statistically, he will never hold more than four percent of all the possible hands in his first five cards.

Let us analyze this further.

To calculate our assumption above, we'll use this formula: 10 hands/hour. X 5 hrs/game X 50 games/year X 40 years/poker life = 100,000 hands/poker life. From this estimation, the approximate number of no pair hands a player would receive in his lifetime would be approximately 50,000. That number dwindles as the rank gets higher such as in a four of a kind (approximately 25x only), straight flush (1.4x).

Investment Odds

These are the estimated return of money that is staked in. To pros who uses this, their assessment can be expressed in the following formula: The potential size of pot, multiplied by the probability of winning the pot, divided by potential loss of money. Players estimate the probability of winning pot by assessing his own hand against the behavior and the betting of his opponents. This is an educated guess, but it becomes accurate with time and practice. When players get investment odds below than one, it is advisable to fold.

Edge Odds

Edge Odds are usually computed by dividing the average winnings/losses of a player to the average winnings of the biggest winner multiplied by a hundred percent. Pros take note of their opponents' performances after each game and their calculations become more substantial the more games they play. With ten games or more, edge odds reflect the relative performance of a player accurately. A good player maintains a high edge odds and they are very expensive players to maintain in a game.