Hi all,


I am a pretty new poker player (playing since Dec 2014, with ~5000 hands played, but I'm doing my best to learn the ropes as quickly as possible so I can stop throwing my money away :-). Having trouble finding an answer to the following query online though:

So when I'm calculating my odds post flop, I'm using the Rule of 2 and 4 to get a percentage chance of hitting my draw/improving my marginal hand.

E.g. Flush draw - 9 outs = 36% with 2 cards to come, 18% with one card.

Now say villain makes a small bet after the flop and I have pot odds of 4-1 to call. (E.g. he bets 2bb in a 6bb pot making 8bb total).

What I am currently still rubbish at is doing a percentage -> pot odds conversion or vice versa.

I would prefer to work in percentages as it makes more sense to me mentally. So how do I go about this? Does 4-1 pot odds in the above scenario mean I shouldn't call over 25% of the pot? Or 20%? Or something else?

Bonus question:

Another problem I'm coming across a lot, is even if I get good calling odds after the flop, the villain will often bet again after the turn, and if I didn't hit my flush, my odds are now greatly decreased and it feels like my previous calculations are irrelevant if I just fold the hand. What am I supposed to be doing in these situations?

Percentage to pot odds becomes more automatic with time. To do the conversion to percentage you start with this formula:
Pot value + your call = 100%

For a pure flush draw of only 9 outs for the next street as you said, 18%, so the pot must represent 82% of the total or more. (Pot value = 100% - your call)

In the case of 2bb into 6bb with a pot of 8bb, the total amount is 10bb. The pot is 8. The pot odds are 4:1 (4 = pot/call). The percentage the pot represents is 8/10 which of course is 80%. That leaves you with NEEDING 20%, when you only have 18%.

So strictly speaking with a 1/4 pot bet you're not QUITE getting the right odds

However, you shouldn't necessarily fold over 2%. This is an approximation, and the pure pot odds calculation does not factor in any adjustment for implied odds (how much you estimate you will win on future streets if you make the flush).

On the other hand if you're drawing for a pure flush, unless you hold the nut draw, you probably don't want to assume you have the full 9 outs, as there's a chance someone else might have the nut draw - and that chance gets worse if you make your flush because on a board with 3h and you have a 9high flush, the Ah still has 7 outs to beat you (13 - 3 on the board - your 2).

Now - on your bonus question - you're wrong.

IF you properly use the rule of 2 to calculate the calling odds for the turn, the rule of 2 STILL applies for the river.

So - on the flop pot is 6, he bets 2, you call 2 getting JUST about 20% odds.
You miss on the turn. Pot is 10. He bets 2 again. 2+10=12. 2/12 = 16% which beats the 18% you need with your flush draw. If he bets 3, then its 3+10=13, and 3/13 = 23% which is not quite good enough - but regardless its still 18% PER STREET.

What you cannot do is use 4% on the flop UNLESS it means all the chips are going in. 4% is with 2 cards to come AND NO MORE BETS, where 2% is per street (note how 2+2 = 4? Why do you think the forum has this name? )

So - last example. On the flop the pot is 8, and you only have 8 chips left. He bets 8 into 8 making the pot 16. You'll call 8 to win 16 giving you 2 (16/8) : 1

You call - because you WILL see two cards, so you use 4%*9=36% which translates to 2:1

I want to expand a little on that. If you are sure that you wont have a turnbet to call, you can also use the 4%. If you are not sure but it is highly likely, its going to be somewhere between those 2% and 4% depending on the likeliness. This is usually the case if you raise on the flop in position. You are now putting money in the pot with a big chance to win on the river (the 4%) and your opponent will likely not bet on the turn. (either you scared him a bit, or he might not be scared at all and thinking hes going to check-raise you). You can just check the turn behind him for a freecard. (although you dont have to of course, either you may have gotten your out, or you may be thinking there is a very good chance he is going to fold)

Of course you are never entirely sure. It is rarely as simple as using the 2% or 4% rule. But of course before you can adjust and decide on how to adjust you need to know the odds.

Thank you - I had a strong feeling I was doing it wrong but as I said had not been able to find someone explaining this specifically online or in the (2) books I've read.

It seems obvious now - apply the rule of 2 for the next street only rather than trying to guess what will happen after the turn.

For the odds, I'm reasonably good at mental arithmetic (coming from a math/science background) so I can do the conversion. The part I was missing is that 33% = 2:1 rather than 3:1 so I probably put quite a few bad bets in up until now .


Since I can't be bothered to create another thread, I now have an unrelated question:

Earlier today I was checking out Blackrain79's blog and read him/her saying that if you are serious about poker you need to be playing 50k+ hands per month.

That seems astronomically high to me. I had 2 weeks off work over xmas where I felt like I played quite a lot and only managed ~5k hands. Having a day job 8 hours a day 5 days a week to get in the way I don't think I could go higher than maybe 10k a month if I multi-tabled (tried that and at this early stage even with 2 tables I got flustered when both hands needed a bet/fold decision at the same time). Even playing Zoom/Rush/etc I don't think I could top 10k.

I'm probably getting way ahead of myself now... but thanks for taking the time to read my ramblings anyway .

Thanks Arjen for the elaboration - at the moment I'm trying to just play ABC until I feel like I have that down and can start devoting brain power to the intricacies, but I will bank that info for the future.

That's pretty much online professional poker player numbers sitting at multiple tables every session.

A live player might be able to see 30 hands an hour, and if they play 40 hours a week (and I dunno how anyone could do more w/o burning out) they're still only going to see 5k hands a month.

Could you suggest a more reasonable target for someone in my position then? Or should I just be aiming to be a non-losing player at this stage?

I've gotten off to a good start and at the moment I'm about breaking even give or take a couple of buy ins. I realize that 5k hands isn't enough to be sure but I don't feel like I've been running hot for much of that so I'm feeling pretty positive overall. Especially since that factors in the ~1200bb I lost in the beginning before I had read a single thing about how to play poker properly.

It depends much on your ambitions and expectations etc.

Also, i think at this point studying is more important than playing. In the beginning, spend like 70% of my time studying (reading books and forums as well as analysing the hands i played) This gradually shifted to 70% playing and 30% studying.

I think the hands per month targets have 2 main purposes:
1: To keep yourself disciplined making enough hours later in your poker career when you no langer play for passion, but because it is your job.
2: To keep you focussed on hours, not profit.

At this point you shouldnt be worrying about hands per month too much. You shouldnt be playing more tables than you feel really comfortable. Or maybe i should even say, you should play as little tables as possible without getting bored. You learn more from focussing on 1 table than autopiloting multiple tables and learning is what its all about now.

You just want to make a bit of a number of hands to have a decent sample size for your self analysis and because it is part of the learning too and because(by playing you get better and better at recognising stuff, at this point you may still have times when you overlook straight options and stuff like that, you may still need to actively think to say what is the nuts with the board.)

You shouldnt be thinking about getting yourself diciplined to make enough hours yet though. If you dont like the game enough to be making many many hours anyway at this stage, i doubt its the right choise to seriously persue a pokercareer)

Indeed you should focus on not being a losing player. It is hard to say when you are though. You need to play like 50.000 hands to get a statistical indication. And still, thats merely a rough indication. To tell your winrate to within +- 1 bb, you need probably like a quarter of a million hands. Clearly you cant play that many hands now to see if your a winning player and when i spoke of analysing your own statistics i was not talking about these. I was talking about things like turn and river bet/raise/fold statistics that need several 1000s of hands to be a little accurate. Right now to become a winning player, you just need to study a lot and have confidence. You cannot yet say too much of the results for a while to come. Although if your losses are very big, that can indicate your a losing player quite early. After about 20.000 hands for example, your winrate should be within + or - 10bb/100 of what your real quality of play is. If you are losing more than 10 bb/100, that means you are very likely a losing player. (these are very rough numbers just pulled from my ass, if you want more precise, youll need to go study statistics and variance and start calculating, which at some point you should do if youre serious about poker)

Here’s another way of looking at pot odds and needed or break-even equity in the form of win probability. Assume the pot is 80 and villain bets 20 all-in. The pot is now 100. For you to call, the pot will become 120 and you will have invested 20/120 of that or 1/6 = 16.7%. Therefore 16.7% of the pot is ‘yours’ and that is the frequency with which you should win to break even. On average, five times you lose 20 for a total loss of 100 and one time you win 100 for a net of 0.

So, to generalize, your break-even equity on calling a showdown bet is

EQ break-even = Amount to invest / Total Pot after you invest

Using pot odds, the equivalent equation is

EQ break-even = 1/(1+Pot Odds)

[Above example: Pot odds = 100/20 = 5. EQ = 1/(1+5)= 1/6]

Notes:

1. For a non-showdown bet, adjustments for future betting have to be considered, as mentioned by others.

2. Your previous investments are no longer ‘yours’ and do not play a role except for determining the pot size.

I've settled on playing Zoom when I have limited time and single table SNG when I have more time at the moment as I got good results from the SNGs so far (I think I have an ITM of 40% so far). I find the player reading/note taking etc staves off the boredom even with just one table and like I said previously I get overwhelmed far too easily at the moment when even two hands have to be played at the same time multi-tabling.

Zoom obviously the hands come fast so no problem with boredom there, plus I read a couple of ppl say that a straight forward TAG is a good strategy for 2NL Zoom so it makes sense to play there while I'm learning the basics.