Ariston - What’s the Odds?

Devilfish going all-in with A6 against KK and he hits the ace, Ram Vaswani has JJ and Trumper beats him with AK. When I started playing I believed Ax was a monster because every time I watched Ax on TV an ace came on the flop. Also, any pair against AK was a coin toss so it was illegal to pass AK ever. However, when I became more versed in the odds of poker I was shocked to say the least.

Coin toss

I often hear the classic race situation being referred to as a coin toss. Now if I have JJ v your AK I am going to win the hand 56% of the time and you will win 44% (approx depending on suits) of the time. Not exactly a coin toss is it? Anyone who would like to sit and flip a coin at those odds I will sit for a week or 2 with you. If I have TJ suited vs your A2, it is far nearer a coin toss (roughly 51/49). Knowing the odds of all individual hand match ups isn’t essential to play but it will sure help your game. Obviously you have to have your opponent on a hand to use the odds, but if you can narrow down your opponent’s holdings, it certainly helps to know the odds you will beat him.

Post-flop odds

A lot of people wonder how you can work out the odds of making a drawing hand after the flop or even on the turn. It is quite simple really, count your number of outs and divide by the amount of cards unknown to you. For example, if you hold AK clubs on a flop containing 2 clubs and a heart, then you have 9 cards that will make your hand on the turn out of 47 unknown cards (you already know your 2 cards and the 3 board cards). Therefore you will hit your flush 9 times out of every 47 times you play. Obviously you have the river if you miss your flush on the turn which would then be 9 cards out of 46. This means you will hit your flush by the river 18 times out of 46.5 or roughly 36% of the time. Obviously you have time constraints to think of online and so a simple way of working out your odds is THE RULE OF FOUR - count your outs to make a winning hand on the flop and multiply by 4. If you have 9 outs you are roughly 36% to make your hand. If you have 8 outs (open ended straight draw or double gutshot) then you are 32%. Obviously on the turn you multiply by 2 instead of 4. Any time you have 14 outs or more to make your hand you are actually a favourite even though you may be behind. E.g. QK clubs on a board of TcJc3h you are a favourite against most hands your opponent can be holding, even a set.

Pot odds

Sometimes you will see people quoting pot odds at you. If I raise your button in a competition with J2 off and you decide to go all-in with AK, it may be correct for me to call. If I can afford to lose a pot to you, your all-in may be giving me the correct odds to call. I know I am beaten at the minute but lets say your raise is only double my original bet, I am now getting 3-1 odds on making the call. Unless you have an over pair I am not a 3-1 dog in the hand. Even if you have AJ I am still not quite a 3-1 dog. It is more than likely I will have 2 "live cards" (i.e. cards that you don’t have) so I will make the call almost every time. Now, when I hit my set of 2’s feel free to swear at me from the rail, I know I made the correct play. If you watch Gus Hansen play (and no, I am not comparing myself to him) he makes a lot of what looks to be crazy plays, he probably knows the odds better than any other player in the world. When he is doing the little head bob he is actually working out his odds on winning the hand and weighing it up against the damage to his stack if he loses. How do you think the Negreanus and Hansens of this world always have a big stack? Sometimes it’s correct to gamble.

Implied odds

This is a grey area that can only be exploited if you know your opponents well. If I think you have AA and are playing tricky, I may just call your small pre-flop raise with absolute junk. Why would you want to take aces on with a 35off I hear you ask? I may be a 6-1 dog in the hand but on the 6th time I crack those aces I’m gonna win a huge pot, the other 5 times I will simply fold when I miss the flop. Most online players cannot fold aces no matter what the board is, so when you hit your 2 pair or str8 you will get them all-in. This is why it’s always worth looking at the other players stack compared to your own, how much can I win if I hit here is a question you should ask yourself. The general advice is that you should never draw to an inside straight, why not? If the price is right you may have either the correct pot odds or massive implied odds so why not try and get lucky every now and then. Obviously I am not advocating you putting in a large % of your chips on the hope of hitting a miracle but if the call is costing you maybe 5% of your stack and you are pretty sure you can double up, if you hit why not have a go. You are not 20-1 to hit your draw but that’s in effect what implied odds you are getting on your 5% lunatic call.

Odds on the plays you make

Say I am on the button with AK suited and the cut off raises. We both have big stacks and are getting towards the money so we have no need to get involved really - wrong. I would go all-in in an instant for the following reasons. The cut off doesn’t need that strong a hand to be raising, remember the further round the table from the blinds, the less of a hand you need to raise with. Even if he has a hand it is far more difficult to call all-in than it is to raise all-in. Even if he has a hand, I am not a huge dog against any holding barring aces or kings. Say we run this situation 10 times, I will give him credit for having a hand 5 times (if he has a big stack like me I may be being generous there) so that is 5 automatic folds. Of the 5 hands he has he may still fold a couple of them (it’s hard to call with small or medium pairs) so we will bin another 2 of them. He calls the other 3 times with JJ,QQ,AK. Against the pairs I win one and lose one (even though the odds don’t say this automatically - I got lucky against the queens) and I chop with the AK. The play is the correct play because out of the 10 times I ran it, I got knocked out once, double up once and won the original raise and blinds 7 times. Ok, this is a hypothetical situation but it happens far more than you would think in the game. What if you had JQ in the same situation? Again you win 7 of the pots without showing and you need to get lucky v the QQ, JJ and AK. The only real difference here is that you will lose an average of twice instead of once out of the 10 times (if you combine the odds of the JJ and the AK hands you should win one on average). This theory is what I refer to as assumptive odds. You are using a re-steal but it is also correct play as over the 10 hands you will actually finish in front. Try and assume what your opponent will do and then see if you can make him do it.

See you at the tables,

ariston