[pokerrocker]

[URL="http://www.learn-texas-holdem.com/poker-odds-calculator.htm"][/URL]Poker odds most often come into play when you are on a drawing hand. You'll want to know if the odds the pot is offering you are better than your actual odds of hitting your hand. To calculate your odds of making your hand, simply count the number of cards that you can consider to be "outs," cards that will complete your hand, and compare them to the number of cards that remain. For example, let's say you hold AK on a board of 3 9 5 8 and you are convinced your opponent has top pair. This means that any ace or king should give you the pot. This gives you six outs, for the three remaining aces and three remaining kings. Since you know your two cards and the four on the board, there are 46 cards you have not seen, 52 minus six. Out of those 46, six give you the win and 40 do not. This is an odds ratio of 40-to-6, which reduces to about 6.5-to-1. This means you need better than 6.5-to-1 pot odds to continue.


Although these are rough calculations, they still may be difficult to make in a game. For this reason, you should have certain poker odds committed to memory. The most important ones are as follows:


Your odds of flopping a set from a pocket pair are about 8-to-1.
Your odds of making a flush on the next card if you flop a four flush are about 4-to-1, if you get to see both cards it is closer to 2-to-1.
Your odds of making a straight on the next card if you are open-ended are around 5-to-1.


If you have four outs with one card to come you are roughly 11-to-1, two outs and you are around 22-to-1, one out and you are 45-to-1. (That one is easy. There are 46 cards in the deck and only one of them helps you, the other 45 do not.)


In a no limit game, you'll also know how much to bet so that opponents aren't getting the right odds to call to try to hit a draw (a pot-sized bet or greater will usually do the trick if you're not sure).

The odds of the 1st flop card hitting your pocket pair is 2 out of 50. The odds of the second flop card hitting your pair is 1 out of 49. The odds that the third one will not hit your pair are 48 out of 48. That is how we arrive at the first part of the equation - (2/50)*(1/49)*(48/48). The "48/48" comes out to 1 and can be dropped from the equation. The second and third scenarios will follow the logic of the first.