Learning hand analysis and odds!

Hi!

I have been playing seriously for about a year. I play online and have been playing in a live league. I would like to know what people can suggest to do to learn how to calculate odds, etc.

My style of play works well but I know I need to learn the odds so who has suggestions?

thanks
funnymann1996

We have an odds calculator you can play around with here http://www.cardschat.com/poker-odds-calculator.php. If you use the search feature, I know there are quite a few threads about how to calculate different odds yourself.

I recommend learning most basic percentages for starting hands, flush draws, etc. so all you really have to work out are pot odds while playing.

Ya, and if not, just google.

There's different ways of, well, for lack of a better term, different ways of explaining odds, even though it's all math. So search the internet and find one that speaks to you. They'll all be saying the same thing, but sometimes the way someone explains something makes a difference.

For your live play, you can just use the 4/2 rule. Take your total number of outs, a gutter for example. You've got 4 outs to a lock, but that's all. If there are two cards to come, and you're going to be all in, multiply number of outs by 4 to get the percentage the draw will hit. 4outs * 4 = 16%

To find the chance of the next card filling the draw, multiply by 2:
4*2 = 8%

These are not exact figures, but close enough for poker needs.

The other way is a bit longer, but more precise, and gets real fast in no time. On the flop there's 47 unseen cards, 4 are good, so 43 are bad 43:4 ~ 10.75:1
(This shows a true percentage of 8.5%)

The nice thing about this way of calculating your odds is that your answer is already in odds form. 10.75:1 are the expressed odds you need to make a call correct (not taking implied odds into account). In the first method attaining 8% is quite easy, but one could make an error converting 8% to the pot odds equivalent, which would be 11.5:1.

alright you said on the flop there are still 47 unseen cards after the flop. well 1 burn card and then 3 flopped. thatd be 48 outta 52 cards. or would you look at it as suppose you have 8 people at the table, each got 2 cards (16) then you have the burn and flop thus 20 cards overall minus total 52 = real unseen amount of cards? could you explain to me what you determine as unseen cards and possibly go into more detail. just a bit confused. thank you

Unseen cards is just referencing all the cards that YOU have not seen face up. After the flop, how many cards do you know the value of? Your two hole cards and the three cards on the flop. Thus unseen cards = 52 - 2 - 3 = 47. You can occasionally guess what your opponent has that may change the calculations but for calculating pot odds, we generally assume we don't know what your opponents are holding.

alright, thank you wurlyq

pokerstove is also a great tool to play around. its free and you can get it from their website.

alright, now if i use the more advanced method, do i just multiply by 2 to see my percent on hitting for a total of the 2 cards to come after the flop? heh yeah im pretty poor at math.

Here is a link to Full Tilts "pro tips" on the subject of estimating odds, which goes into a fair amount of detail :http://www.fulltiltpoker.com/pro-tip/TeamFullTilt/2
As I recall, the estimation techniques is pretty accurate and good enough for normal play. The further to the extremes you get (few or many outs) the less accurate it is, but still good enough.