If you’ve ever sat at a poker table – whether it’s a friendly home game, an online tournament, or a cash game at the casino – you know that chance plays a role in every version of poker, from Texas hold ‘em to seven card stud to razz.
Further, if you’ve spent time playing more consistently in any poker format, you’ve seen that odds play a sizable role in long-term winnings (or losings) and that the best players in the world rely heavily on these odds. Over the course of tens or hundreds of thousands of hands, the numbers don’t lie.
The professionals that regularly turn poker profits know these odds like the back of their hands. Odds of catching runner-runner to complete a straight? Easy. Odds of hitting a 4-outer on the river? Got it. Odds of an opponent holding one of your outs, thereby decreasing your odds of hitting? No problem.
The incredible number of poker hands they’ve seen and played make these not complex calculations but more like Tom Brady recognizing defensive coverage and where/when his receivers will be open. It’s a sixth sense.
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Why do odds and poker calculators matter?
While the average poker player (yes, we’re average) in online casinos like Gaming City likely cannot calculate these odds on the spot, there are tools to help us learn how to make the most of our poker hands. Poker odds calculators are widely available to help you both short-term and long-term.
Poker hands, especially online tables, move pretty quickly, so you’ve got limited time to get insight into the hand you’re playing at the moment.
Where these poker calculators can really come in handy is in regard to your long-term play. Allowing a poker calculator app to track your hand-by-hand performance can give you some incredibly valuable insight into how you play certain hands at different tables under certain conditions.
Numbers and odds to help you learn
Paying close attention to these numbers – the odds of making a hand or the odds of winning a hand – can teach you a great deal about the game and inform your long-term poker strategy.
Even knowing the rough odds of the outcome of a hand can help you make an informed decision about the cards in your hand and the chips in front of you.
Studying the output from poker calculators – especially after a lot of hands – will give you some valuable insight into the hands that are worth playing out in the long term versus the hands whose reward does not outweigh the long-term risk.
What does a poker odds calculator compute?
If you’re a relative newcomer to poker, you may not realize just how many variables professionals take into consideration when considering their odds. The number of players in hand is the first thing to consider. Both at the deal and at each stage of the hand. Knowing how many cards the dealer holds is also an important key to calculating odds.
Further, they take into consideration dead hands (folded cards), especially if those hands have been folded face-up. Seeing those cards provides some very valuable information.
After the flop and as you enter the turn and the river, it becomes increasingly important to understand the cards in front of you and their relative value based on what’s on the board (cards that have been flipped over the dealer) and what may be left in the deck the dealer holds.
A poker odds calculator can provide all of these odds to you, and nearly as fast as the best poker professionals on the planet. And unless you have a photographic memory, the best calculators can store hand information – including how the hand unfolded stage by stage – better than you’ll be able to remember.
Answering the age-old question – What’s in it for me?
In this case, the answer is easy: understanding numbers, odds, and percentages as they relate to your poker hands will only increase your long-term profitability (assuming there’s some money at stake at some point in your journey).
If you’re new to poker or any of its many variations, a poker calculator will only help with the learning process. You’ll fast-track learning what type of play is best suited to specific formats at specific table values under specific conditions.
Just as numbers and analytics have become incredibly valuable to every major sport, odds and probabilities have become a cornerstone of successful poker. Whether you’re occasionally playing as a hobby or more regularly to turn a profit, knowing and understanding how these odds impact the outcome will definitely help you in the long term.
No matter your poker skill, we hope that you’ll keep in mind that the numbers don’t lie. Of course, anything can happen over the course of a single game or tournament. However, over the course of time, math holds true, and poker odds calculators are one of the best educational tools in the game.
Sources
1. https://www.cardplayer.com/poker-tools/odds-calculator/texas-holdem
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