Poker Equity

Using your equity

The first chance you get to use equity is preflop. If you feel you have the best hand but don't raise, you've missed a big chance to increase your equity. Besides increasing your equity in the pot, raising preflop has many other advantages. It reduces the number of players in the pot, establishes your image as being strong and aggressive and can often result in you having "position" in the hand.

Remember, just as you would not really know your equity at any given point in the hand, neither does your opponent. Everyone is trying to determine what each other's equity is by putting them on a range of hands. If you are the aggressor, opponents will naturally think you are playing a stronger hand and perhaps give you credit for more equity than you really have, which you can exploit by continuation betting on dry or strong boards.

Another arrow in your quiver

Equity is not a hard and fast concept, of course. Unless your opponent has shown you their cards and you have a pot odds calculator at your disposal, you never really know your equity in a given situation, and you certainly can't predict what your equity will be after the turn and river. Still, understanding the concept and how to apply it can improve your game.

Knowing your equity in poker relies greatly on the ability to accurately put your opponents on a hand. As you get better at reading your opponents, the accuracy of your equity analysis will also get better.

Strict adherents to equity would say you should bet every time you believe you have more equity, as you will win more often than you lose. But equity is an inexact science and should just be one factor in the equation when deciding whether or not to bed, fold or call.

Understanding equity helps you identify situations where you are ahead, behind or somewhere in the middle, enabling you to make the best betting decisions possible.