Confused about odds and outs

[theoldman999]

I'm following the course and I just finished section 3.3 and I have done the first three test in (1 hr 15 mins, 40 mins and 50 mins) give or take a couple of minutes.

I understand that to figure out the outs you take the number of outs and times it by either 4(turn) or 2(river) to get a good ball park figure on what percentage you have to hit your card to make your hand. I understand that to figure out odds you take what is in the pot and what you have to call to stay in the pot and divide them to come up with a ??? to 1 solution, then add those two numbers together and divide by 100 to get your break even number. That number should be less than your outs number to make a good call...I understand that.

What I am confused about is that after the last test I started thinking about how to calculate the numbers quicker, so I came up with the solution that with a str or flush draw on the river you would need to have odds of at least 6 to 1 to make the proper call. The str is 8 outs x 2 = 16% and the flush is 9 outs x 2 = 18% and the 6 to 1 is 6 + 1 = 7 divided by 100 which is 14.2 so if the pot is $3.00 and the bet is .50 it would be proper to call.

What really had me confused is if I had AKo and the flop was Axx and the turn was a K, I now have a pretty strong hand, but with only 4 outs (2 A's and 2 K's) I would need somewhere around 15 to 1 to make a call on the river with top two pair (4 outs x 2 = 8%) and 15 to 1 = 15 +1 =16 divided by 100 = 6.25...so at that rate on the river in a $6 pot I couldn't call anything over 0.40 to make the proper call with top two pair!!!

I don't think that on the river I would ever get a bet like that...so what would you suggest, or maybe it is addressed in later chapters and I just haven't got there yet but this was something that I came up with because I was trying to calculate the outs and odds faster to deal with real time online play.

Thanks for the feedback and hopefully I can continue to progress on schedule.

theoldman999

[The Professor]

Hi there,

First of all - apologies for the delay in me responding - I have been missing in action the last couple of weeks due to moving house and a pretty hectic schedule.

You seem to have got a good understanding of the maths side, I presume when you say Turn(4x) and River (2x) you actually mean after the flop(4x) and after the turn(2x)?

The only comment I would make on your calcs is that for a straight or flush draw you would only need 5to1 on the turn as this would be a break even percentage of around 16% [1 divided by 6 (5+1)] - but your calculations seem to demonstrate that you are understanding the concepts.

As a side note - A quick an easy way to get to this is take your break even percentage that you need ie for a straight draw on the turn = 8 outs x 2 = 16% then divide 100 by your BEP and then subtract 1 to get to the pot odds you need eg: 100 divided by 16% = 6.25 subtract 1 = 5.25 to 1 pot odds.

I'm a little confused on the next bit of your post - I if I'm reading it right then I think this is where your confusing yourself.

You only use odds calculations in the following situations:

a. You haven't hit a hand but are drawing to a hand that will likely win you the pot.
b. You have hit a hand, but think that it is not good enough to win the pot and you need to improve your hand to do so.

ie: you only use pot odds to make a decision if you think you are behind in the hand.

So if you had top two pair with your AKo then you would only be looking at these odds calculation if you actually believe that your opponent has a better hand than this. If this was the case then you would have 4 outs to improve your hand to a full house which would be approximately 8% chance with just two cards to go. This means that you need 11.5 to 1 pot odds (100/8% = 12.5 - 1 = 11.5) to call if you think that your two pair is beaten.

If you want quick ways to calculate these odds / percentages for the fast pace of online play then I suggest you download the starting hand desktop wallpaper and take a look at the Quick reference box and then all the percentages for all the various outs and the pot-odds required to call will be surrounding your poker table window while you are playing.