Knowing Your Odds in Texas Holdem By Stuart James Smith At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

A lot of people think that poker is a lottery but in fact there is a lot of skill involved in the game. A texas holdem player needs to know when to play a hand or not and to make this decision he needs to know the odds of his starting hand winning or of making his hand if he continues. In Texas Holdem the odds are calculated by taking into account the number of cards that are available that would improve a players hand to the amount of cards left. Once the odds of winning are calculated then the player can see if the odds available match or are better than the chance that he has to win the Texas Holdem hand.

To be a winning poker player it is necessary to understand the pot odds for Texas Holdem and other games. Once you understand the mathematics then you use them to help you to make the decisions that will turn you into a winning player. The knowledge of these Texas holdem odds are especially important online as there are less opportunities to spot tells than there are in a live poker environment. It is not usually necessary to go to the nth degree to work out your Texas holdem odds but you should have a basic understanding of them and why some calls or folds are wrong decisions with your drawing hands. For instance a player who holds a pair of Aces should know that pre flop his odds of winning the hand decline with the larger number of people willing to enter the hand. To avoid getting caught out then it is worth making a raise to limit the field to get rid of the callers who have virtually nothing but hope to hit their hand hard. Players that lose with aces against a full table of callers will often remark that they have had a bad beat but in reality if they knew the odds then they would realise that their odds were that they were likely to lose the hand and therefore it was not a bad beat but more like bad play. These sorts of plays can be seen all the time and the slow playing of the Aces against a big field often ends in disappointment whereas the slow play against a small number of opponents would leave the player with a huge advantage.

Fortunately you can get some help with your Texas Holdem poker odds as there are a number of pieces of software available that can help you with those odds. Now not all software is created equal so it is best to check with your poker room before using. Fortunately Poker Stars have made things a bit easier for us and have published a list of 65 acceptable tools. My favourite software on the list for calculating Texas holdem odds is Tournament Indicator. This software will calculate your odds, track your oppositions playing styles and also tell you what M you are (see Dan Harrington’s books). This is perfect for the Sit N Goes or multi table tournaments as it will provide you with enough information so that you can decide your moves.

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