Poker Hands Odds!

Understanding the odds in poker simply comes down to knowing how many cards in the deck will give you a strong poker hand, and if the amount of the bet you have to call justifies it or not.  Calculating odds may seem like a difficult endeavor at first, but with some practice it’s actually quite easy to do.  We can’t stress enough, though,  how critical this skill is to acquire, as knowing your odds is truly what makes poker a game of skill and not luck.

You’re probably already aware that Texas Hold'em is easily the most recognized and popular game being played today.  Any night of the week you can find a program on TV where they are playing it, in fact, so this article is dedicated to the figuring of odds for Texas Hold’em.

Let’s start, however, with a very simple explanation of odds. Say you’re flipping a coin. The odds of it coming up either heads or tails is exactly 50%. Now, if you’re flipping for money, and your opponent wagers $5.00 that it will come up heads and furthermore $5.00 if it comes up tails, you’re getting in this instance precisely 1:1 odds…in other words… exactly 50%, and over time you’ll end up breaking even.  Now, say your opponent thinks he’s obscenely lucky and makes you an offer of paying $10.00 for every time tails comes up, but you only have to pay him $5.00 for every time heads comes up. Now he’s offering you 2:1 odds on an exactly even money bet, and in the very short term he may well win…but over the course of say 1000 flips, he will absolutely lose his shirt because of the bad odds he offered to you.

To show why this is, if you flip 1000 times, you’ll win 10.00 dollars five hundred times (50%) for $5,000 dollars, and lose 5.00 dollars five hundred times (50%) for a total of $2,500 dollars, giving you a profit of $2,500!

This basic principal of odds happens in almost every hand of poker, and knowing how to calculate them properly will start you down the path of being a successful player. 

Let’s go over some pre-flop odds on the probability of being dealt some specific hands before the flop.

Pocket Aces 220:1 any specific pair has these same odds, be it aces thru deuces
Pocket Aces or Kings 110:1
Any pocket pair aces thru deuces 16:1
Ace/King suited 330:1
Ace/King unsuited 110:1
Ace/King suited or unsuited 82:1
Any two suited cards 3.25:1