How do you caculate odds at the table?

[Magra]

If you 2 people are all-in, how do you caculate the odds of percentage of winning/losing. Is it a certain forumula, or do you take the pot odds and divide it or something? I take the pot odds, divide it by the remaining cards in the deck, and use that. But everytime i come up like 10-15% off. Is it just my math or is that not thw way?

[Dave B]

Where are you getting your odds from? Sometimes on TV they used other players discards. So AK vs 77 isnt a true race because an Ace and King were already discard, so the AK only has 4 outs.

Also, if you are ignoring leading players outs, that can goof things up. For example: A k vs 7 8 flop A 8 2 . The player w/ a pair of 8s has 4 outs-2 8s and the 2 non heart 7s, but even if he hits, the AK has a lot of other outs of his own which will take the pot back.

[snoogins47]

If you 2 people are all-in, how do you caculate the odds of percentage of winning/losing. Is it a certain forumula, or do you take the pot odds and divide it or something? I take the pot odds, divide it by the remaining cards in the deck, and use that. But everytime i come up like 10-15% off. Is it just my math or is that not thw way?

The "pot odds" have nothing to do with how often you will win. The only *accurate* way to figure out how often people will win is to run through every possible outcome. If this is preflop, I highly suggest you don't try this with a pen and paper.

Mostly, it's just memorization and approximation.

[Silhouette]

(Long post, sorry)

I've always used the rule of 4-2.

After the flop, add up your outs. You have # of outs * 4 to catch on turn or river. If you miss turn, you have # of outs * 2 to catch on river.

Example:

10 J in pocket.

Flop: 9 4 8

You have 8 outs for the straight, 9 for the flush. This double counts the 7 and Q of Diamonds, so 9 + 8 = 17 - 2 = 15 Outs.

15 outs has roughly 60% chance to catch on either the turn or the river. If you miss the turn, you're roughly 30% to catch the river.

To address the question about calling all ins, that's more a question of pot odds which is modified a bit. Make sure the outs you're counting are for nuts, and that the other player's hands don't have you drawn dead already.

If it is YOU going all in after flop, then you have the rule of 4 * outs. If it is to call a single all in, it'd be the same as there is no betting. If there are other players in the hand, then calling the turn by itself is 2 * outs, + 2 * outs for the river, but that would include another round of betting that may change your odds..

The reason this works is there are 52 cards in a deck, minus the 2 in your pocket (which you can easily account for). Every other card, since there are fifty, is 2% of the deck. With every card you know, dealt or if you have a good read, the %'s change slightly, but the 4-2 rule is still a good approximation. So if you have however many outs * 2% for the turn + the 2% for the river, you can get a good idea of where you're at, and if it's worth the call.

[gol4pro]

The rule of 4 usually works, but not always.

When in the range of 1-12 outs, it's fairly accurate, but outside that range, it becomes fairly inaccurate.

[Silhouette]

Right..

Rule of 4 is great for quick thinking, but compare it to a chart to see how much it's off on each out.. you can kind of get a feel for how close it is and how that changes with the outs. After 12 outs, I usually knock 5% or so off of the rule to get it closer, but it's still a great rule of thumb.

[Adamm]

A chart like this one...
http://www.texasholdem-poker.com/odds_chart.php

Good thing to remember that you need 14 outs on the flop to get better than 50% to your money. So if there's already money in the pot (which there always should be!), it's not a bad idea to push all-in because you'll be getting more than a 50% chance to win more than double your current stack (unless an opponent has fewer chips) and add the chance of them folding and it makes it a good play. You really need to consider what outs you have though, because you can have an outside straight draw with two overs and you might think that hitting one of your overs is no good because they have an overpair or something like that, so that needs to become part of it.

Also, the 2x / 4x rule starts to be off by around 1% at 10 outs and the higher you go the more inaccurate it gets. 2x is always more accurate with one card to come, as opposed to on the flop waiting for the turn.