A Quick Tip

This is a quick but useful tip I would like to pass along to you. The whole iead is to double you chanceswhne your twice the favorite. So basically, if you are a 2 to 1 favorite don't call, raise! If you call, you can only win the pot if your hand is the best at the river. If you raise, you can win the pot if your challenger folds OR you can win wtih the best hand at the river.

Okay, I debated on whether or not I wanted to ask this question and risk showing my complete and absolute ignorance in regards to the technical aspects of poker, but I could really use some clarification.

When someone is a "favorite" 2 to 1, etc. What does that mean exactly? I watch the poker shows on TV and they mention that so-n-so is a 2:1 favorite over the other guy and I can tell. Based on the percentages that they show, 80% to 40%, etc. I assume that 2:1 meants that player A is twice as likely to win the hand over player B.

Am I correct in this assumption? Also, if I am playing someone how do I know I am a favorite over him or visa-versa?

Any explanation would be greatly appreciated.

Jim

Ch4nc3 said:

When someone is a "favorite" 2 to 1, etc. What does that mean exactly? I watch the poker shows on TV and they mention that so-n-so is a 2:1 favorite over the other guy and I can tell. Based on the percentages that they show, 80% to 40%, etc. I assume that 2:1 meants that player A is twice as likely to win the hand over player B.
Am I correct in this assumption?

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Yes. In this case it would mean you're a 67% favourite

Ch4nc3 said:

Also, if I am playing someone how do I know I am a favorite over him or visa-versa?

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If you know what cards he have you simply use an oddscalculator. If you don't know what he has, you make an educated guess, as to how likely you are to win.

2:1 favorite means that if the hands are played for every 3 times, player A will win twice, and B will win once.

As far as knowing if you're a favorite and how much. Essentially you have to put your opponent on a hand. Then calculate how many cards will allow him to beat your hand.

Ex. two pair vs flush draw. Assuming that one of your two pair is in the suit of your opponents flush draw and you do not hold a card in his suit, he has 8 outs. 13 cards of each suit, four of them being "known" leaves 9 cards to make the flush, however; 1 of those will give you a full house.

Now this is not 100% accurate however, to calculate percentage of hitting, after the turn I take (#of outs x 2 + 1), so in this example (8 x 2 = 16 + 1 =17%) you'd be an 83% to win or roughly 2:1.

After the river, I normally figure about 2x the previous percent, you have two chances at 17% = 34% to hit the flush draw after the flop.

I think this is pretty close. But, could someone with a little more knowledge revise this for me?

isn't %83 more than a 4:1 leader?
I'm so lost with odds and %s...still can't for the life of me figure them out at a table

ChuckTs said:

isn't %83 more than a 4:1 leader?
I'm so lost with odds and %s...still can't for the life of me figure them out at a table

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let's simplify it to 80% to 20%

if you play 10 hands 80% will hit 8/10 times, 20% will hit 2/10 times or, .8:.2 reduces to .4:.1

or 4:1... you're right, i reduced my fraction wrong, lmao

While your tip should be obvious to any decent player it is still a good tip.