So, I basically understand how being committed and getting the right price to call works. If the percentage chance of winning is higher than the price you are being asked to put in as a bet, you are committed. I understand the rule of 2 and 4, I also have no problem with working out what percentage I'm putting in the pot.

Where I get confused is where this info actually applies to real situations. Lets say the pot is $6 the flop comes out with 2 hearts and I hold 2 hearts. I have 9 outs and so I have roughly an 18% chance on the turn and roughly 36% of hitting it when all the cards are dealt.

So if my opponent bets anything over 18% on the flop then I shouldn't call, however when does this ever happen. In general people bet at least half of the pot in my experience, so in this scenario if the opponent bets $3 then to call would cost me 25% which is more than my chance of hitting it on the turn. It's within my chances of hitting it on the river. However when do I make the decision to call it because I could make it on the river?

Also lets say they bet $6 on the flop so to call I'm putting roughly 33% in, do I call because I can make it on the river?

I get confused as to when a call makes sense. I can do the math, but in simple turn situations where you aren't including that you might hit on the river, the maths never seem to make sense to me. People would have to be betting less than one quarter pot for a 9 outer to make sense. This almost never happens.

Has my question made sense? Is this where implied odds or something comes in? What am I missing? Sorry if this is a really basic question, but there is something I'm missing and I've been trying to find the answer everywhere but either I can't find it or I just don't understand.

Try to think of the tree of possibilities where you can make money later in the hand. Sometimes you hit it right away and you can bet the turn to get called by worse, sometimes also the river. Sometimes the turn is a blank and he checks, you bet and he folds. Sometimes turn comes a blank, he checks and you check behind, river is a blank and you bet and get a fold. etc etc.

But if that is the case then why and how does getting the right price to call even apply? I mean an opponent could technically be bluffing each time, how would I know when to call and when to fold?

Until the river, it basically doesn't apply when you have a hand with very high equity when it is behind.

There's a lot of factors really. Not just calculating pot odds. In your example flopping a flush draw yields 9 outs which is around 36% by the river but obv other cards will help your hand as well. Should take into account implied odds and effective stacks as well as SPR and yes your opponents.


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Can you explain that in a simpler way. I'm very new to poker and don't fully understand. Why would pot odds not count until the river.

Also how do you know on the river if you are getting the right price to call? Sorry for the noob questions but i'm trying to learn.

And thank you for any help dude.

You can always determine your direct pot odds, the bet + pot / bet. This however does account for any actions that you might make you money. If someone bets half pot you're getting 3:1 on a call and with a draw you need more like 4.5:1 to hit it on the next card, if you assume you can only win the pot when you make the hand and no further bets go in.

In reality that is almost never true, except when it is an all in bet. You can either get paid off when you make the hand or bluff when you don't. Imagine someone always calling a potsized bet when you make your draw. For simplicity we're on the turn and villain bets half pot. We need 4.5:1 so we're short 1.5 times the bet. When you call the pot is going to be 4 times the bet on the turn. If he always calls pot (4x the bet on the turn) then you are actually getting 5:1 because he is going to pay you the additional 4 bets off on the river.

When he always folds you just win the pot on the river every single time, therefor you have the easiest call ever. In reality there is a balance between them and villain sometimes calls or folds when you have it and folds or calls when you don't. You can go down every single option and add them all up and basically determine what value the hand is to you.

Now how do you know what additional value you can expect? You need to do these calculations, but there are ways to sort of estimate what to do. I never fold my draws to any reasonable price on the flop (up to full pot) and I start thinking about it when it goes over 2/3 pot on the turn. Also position matters and you should be much less inclined to call with draws out of position.

On the river it gets easy. It just matters if you're winning more than the odds you're getting. If you do you call, if you don't you fold (or raise). Against good opponents there are different ways to do this that tend to be more range based but you can forget about that for now.

Trebe I think you are not considering hand equity.
If You have top pair top kicker on the flop with a nut flush draw is that the same as a flush draw while currently having zero.
Also if the pot is 6 and you are 1st to act an bet 3 the pot is now 9 IF he cones over the top and raises to 6 the pot is now 15 you now have to bet 3 more to call and are getting 5 to 1.
The more and more hands you see the more and more you will get a feel for the game.
I dont recommend "on the job training". Get a software program where you can play thousands of hand per month.

I'm probably one of the less knowledgeable posters on this forum but I think I can explain pot commitment in simple terms the way I understand
It.
It's related to pot odds and being on the draw, but here's what I think, pot commitment really means.
I'll use a sample hand i played.
I guy sat at my table who called an all in, what I thought at the time was pretty light, with AQoff.
So, I thought I'd target him.
He made a raise of 20 and I had position on him and raised it to 100, looking at AKo.
I know, it's a play open to criticism but I'm trying to make a point.
He called my raise and we went to a flop of , if I remember correctly, 2,5,4.
I only had 100 behind so , no matter what the flop, I went all in.
You see, I put in 50% of my stack preflop.
I only had 100 behind.
I already committed my self to the pot.
If you put in a certain % of your stack and then fold, that's disasterous.
You can't call off, or bet, a large % of your stack and then only to fold.
That's why you always have to be cognisent of how much money you're commiting to the pot.
I was gambling he had a hand like,AQ,A J, and underpair or something like that.
He ended up calling and also having AK.
It was a chop.
This is part of what makes poker, although it appears simple at the surface, so complicated.
Pot odds are mostly relevant if you're playing effectively deep stacked.
You rarely find yourself committed if you're playing deep.
If you're medium to short stacked, you shouldn't be chasing draws anyway.
The shorter your stack, the more you have to play tournament style, willing to commit your stack to a otherwise marginal hand like TPTK, or AK.

trebe (OP) ... welcome and you are in good hands here. Isn't is great when posts don't contradict each other? You are ahead of most players to be raising these questions 'already' in your poker journey.

Yes, you rarely get the 'right' price to call a bet, especially Heads Up. But that is where range comes into play. You didn't tell us what your two cards were for your flush draw ... AKs? You may also have other ways to win the hand besides your flush .. and you may get paid even more when you hit that way of winning than with your flush. You may also be ahead right now anyway, which means there is no bet that your opponent can make where you should fold.

We all would be better off saying we get a 'decent' price to call as opposed to 'the right' price to call. What if a player 'always' bet out a pot sized bet when in early position? Does he always have it? No, he can't so we make a decision to call (or raise) and see a Turn card.


Being pot committed has more to do with your 'remaining' stack when compared to the current (or proposed) pot size than just about any other factor. You need to consider this BEFORE you call a bet you are facing since calling a bet may make you pot committed.

In looking at your flush draw .. What happens if you and your opponent get into a min-raising 'war'? The direct pot odds just keep getting better and better, so you 'have to' call. But eventually your remaining stack gets to the point where you would now be getting the 'right' price to call even if your opponent shoves. You are now pot committed regardless of any further action .. unless you blank out on a River.

Sometimes you get caught up in a hand and end up on the River with Ace high, but you are getting 8 to 1 to call a bet. Is your opponent going to have worse more than 12% of the time? Probably not if they are paying attention to your stack, but you pay them off anyway.

The alternate way of looking at pot commitment is just strictly looking at your starting stack. Some player's will 'never' fold if they've already put 40-60% of their stack into a pot, regardless of their holding .. especially in a cash game setting. They don't care about pot odds or even what their holding. Now that's not really a good way to play, but the point is this here ... If you are looking at a marginal spot, like you open with 99 on the Button and get 3-bet by the BB. Calling the 3-bet would be almost 35% of your starting stack. You have to decide if by calling you are pot committed, which usually means that shoving is the better play, or that you just aren't getting the right price to set mine and need to fold now versus facing a Flop with over-cards.

So you may be considering 'pot commitment' both before calling a bet and also when a 'bad' card comes out on the next street when you thought you were ahead.

Poker is a game of information, the more you have the better you will 'feel' about your decisions. When facing an unknown player, you have to work off your past experience in similar spots to determine what you may or may not do. These ABC or default decisions are based off what we've come to expect from the 'average' opponent. Just remember that sometimes opponents will surprise us and, sometimes unfortunately, they have a right to their own way of playing their cards and chips! GL

You're aware that those aren't your only two options, right?

Implied odds drives whether a call makes sense, not your direct pot odds. That is to say, you not only want to factor in the odds that you make your hand, but if you do, will you get paid off, and for how much? Implied odds makes no limit hold em as much art as science since it factors in what you think of your opponent and respective stack depths as well as what range of hands you put your opponent on. You could put an estimate, based on how the hand went down and what you know of your opponent, of how likely you are to get more money out of your opponent and how much if you hit, but it really is an estimate, not a hard and fast number.

Using these estimates preflop, players of no limit hold em like to use stack depth considerations to decide if they have the implied odds to call a preflop raise as an example. Many might say that to call profitably preflop to "set mine" you need the smaller of you and your opponent's stacks to be 10x the amount of the raise and to call with suited connectors, 25x the amount of the raise. The latter is actually completely ludicrous in 1-2 btw since most raises are an obscene $12-$15, meaning that unless both you and your opponent have more than the typical $300 starting stack, calling a $12 raise would be considered unprofitable. You simply wouldn't hit your set often enough to call profitably, not just because of the odds of hitting the set (about 1 in 8) but also because you won't always get paid off when you do.

You would almost be better off playing limit hold em if you are more concrete math oriented since implied odds play a much smaller part in that game where beyond the direct pot odds the only extra you are likely to make is one more big bet. In no limit it could be someone's entire stack.

Trebe, do you happen to limp hands preflop?

look at it this way

pot =$100 on flop and villain bets $80 making the pot $180 with you holding a fourflush. $80 to call and you are getting 9/4 pot odds which isn't enough on it's own to justify a call since the chance of hitting your flush is about 4/1 which means there has to be at least $320 in the pot

the next thing to consider is implied odds. to justify the call you need villain to contribute at least another $140 in future bets to make the call profitable with implied odds ( $180 already in the pot leaves another $140 required to make that $320 and 4/1 odds). so the judgement is whether you think villain will contribute another $140 in future bets. if you do then a call is profitable even though the immediate pot odds are insufficient

There is a great older post by iraisetoomuch on the COTM: threads about pot commitment worth a read, verifying some of the great stuff already written here, and, dispelling the explanation I gave of what I , I guess, I incorrectly gave about pot commitment.
According to the piece, I guess I'm a donkey.
Ok, I do want to say two things, no pun intended, on the matter.
Pure Pot odds, first off, we're originally intended for limit games.
In any case, in defense of what I wrote, I personally will continue to use this criteria because I strongly believe, if you invest 40 to 60% of your stack only to fold, you are playing bad, period.
You have to determine, if you're going to see a flop, on the flop, if your hand is worth continuing with and how much the hand is worth investing.
Hope that helps explain things.

That's not correct. If someone bets 18 on the flop into a 100 dollar pot you need 18/136 or 13.3% equity to call.

Here's a simplified way of doing the math in your head. If you have 18% equity and there's no implied odds (you're going all in) that means you can call 18 to win 64 + 18 + 18 (make the starting pot be 100 - 2 times your outs or 100 - 18 - 18).

So if the person is betting more than 18/64 of the pot you should fold. 9/32 is 28%. With 9 outs, and no implied odds (approximating with the 2/4 rule) you shouldn't call a bet of more than 28% of the pot.

OK thanks for all the help guys. I won't lie and say I've fully understood it but I'll put it into practice and and see how it goes.

@Kelvis, not I almost never limp unless its UTG in a nine handed game, sometimes in a 6 handed if I know one of the players on the table is either targeting me or is very loose and aggressive. Then; most of the time; I'll leave it to them to raise.

I have another question about when all the cards all dealt and there is no action left but to check/taise.

Say the board come out Jh, 8d, 3h, 5c, Qh, I'm last to act and the villain has a possible flush, but I hold either a set or 3 pait. He raises 40% of the pot. What would look like an obvious value bet, however there is the chance he's bluffing, How do I know (in general terms as well as in this hand) if I should call.

I watch a lot of poker and I think why are the calling if there is a good chance they are behind. I understand a set is hard to lay down but how do I figure out if it is profitable in the long run to sometimes be calling similar situations where its possible I'm ahead.

Sorry for all the questions but these are the two parts of poker I'm finding very difficult to understand.

Thanks for the help guys, I know they're nob questions, but I really want to get better,

There are two sides to every poker decision ... math and 'holding'

From the easy math side of things you are putting in 22% (40%/180%) of the pot if you call, so you need to win at least 22% of the time to break even over a long period of time. Technically this is not supposed to be affected by the amount of chips/BB you are putting in but I don't see how this doesn't play into the decision at least a little.

From the practical side you have two things to consider .. bluff and value range
1) How often is my opponent bluffing? Unfortunately you may have limited information here, so let's just say that he bluffs 10% of the time 'against you'.

10% is not 22%, so can we come up with an additional 12% when we look at our opponents range of holdings that they might bet with .. taking into consideration what they think we might be holding and our image and habits.

2) Opponent's value betting range .. We need 12% additional 'equity' in our call to break even. So we need to find a range of holdings that we can beat 13.33% of the time (12%/90%) that our opponent would try to value bet with.

If our opponent would 'never' value bet 2 pair (even top 2) then all those combinations of hands must be left out of the value range and now must be included in the 'bluffing' probability ... so if we hold two pair, then we can't add anything more to the calling equity we need here and must fold. But, by default, we may be able to slightly increase our opponents bluffing probability. (Certainly not by an additional 12% though!)

So the task is to figure out where your hand fits ...

AX flushes ... 9 combos .... KX flushes ... 8 combos
TX flushes ... 7 combos .... 9X flushes ... 6 combos
8X flushes ... 5 combos .... 7X flushes ... 4 combos
6X flushes ... 3 combos .... 5X flushes ... 2 combos
42s flush ... 1 .... So that's 45 combos of flushes, but you should be able to eliminate 'a lot' of them that your opponent wouldn't make it to the River with (like 72s) so the 'real' number isn't as high. So let's say half ... 22 combos of possible flushes.

There are 16 possible combinations of T9, but T9h is already in there so that leaves us with 15. But lets say that only combinations of ThXx and Tx9h would value bet (with a heart blocker). So that leaves us with 6 more combos that our V would value bet with.

There are 15 combos of sets ... but depending on the action you might be able to eliminate the 3 combos of 5s. So that gives us 12 combos of sets.

I'm not going to do the calculation for combinations of 2-pair hands since it opens up a pretty large number. You will have to figure out which 2-pair you have and then create some combinations of holdings that V might have from there. I will say that you should be able to see that if you start to include 2-pair hands into your V's 'value' range that calling here becomes pretty easy depending on which 2-pair you give yourself. You open up a pretty big debate as to what kind of opponent would include 2-pair hands in their value range on this Board.

So this gives us 40 combinations of hands that we are assuming our V would value bet with that are 'above' 2-pair. How many can you beat?

Let's look at 'your' set of Js ... You only beat 6 combos of sets (8s and 3s) out of the 40 ... 6/40 is 15% ... so if you had a set of Jacks you are calling the bet, but barely making a profit in the long run. 15%>13.3%

With a set of 8s your are now unable to call as 3/40 is 7.5% UNLESS you now include the possible combinations of 5s that were left out above 6/43 is 13.9%.

So long story short ... The more hands you can put into your opponents value betting range the easier it is to call depending on how your holding falls into that range. Just remember that your opponent had to get to the River with 'something' and you should be able to logically eliminate quite a few holdings just based on your opponent just wouldn't get to the River with them in the first place, like we did for the flushes. Hands we can logically eliminate form an opponents value betting range now fall into the bluffing range, which may cause the bluffing frequency to increase. GL

trebe i feel your pain as i have asked this exact question to myself millions of times in my early years dying to know the answer.

as an extremely loose rule of thumb, if you are heads up and you flop a naked flush draw and you call his c-bet then approximately half the time you will get a free card and half the time he will fire a second barrel assuming you have no prior intel on him. so from the flop you don't really have only a 19% chance and you also don't have a 35% chance either, in reality you'll have somewhere in between when you factor in the 50% chance of a free card. So just split it down the middle and assume you have roughly a 27% chance from the flop onwards. On the turn it will always be 19% though.

People are welcome to tell me im full of **** for saying this and i will keep an open mind to other people correcting me on this.

You're not full of ****, it's just incomplete. There's the option of betting/raising, which means actually making your hand isn't quite as important. If you fold your flush draws every time you're getting less than the strictly required pot odds you're making a huge mistake.

As a rule of thumb, with enough chips behind and against reasonable bets, never fold flush draws in position. When out of position, be more careful since villain has the opportunity to keep pots smaller when you hit so you need to extract more the times you do.

This is essentially tossing money on a grease fire. You're getting targeted because you limp, not the other way around.