Be aware of Pot Odds at all times
Pot odds would be another important poker concept. With functions throughout the play of a hand. Basically, pot odds would refer to how the amount of money in the pot would influence your decision to play or pass. 
For those of you new to this concept of poker, this would be an example to help clarify. Suppose you were holding a king and queen, and seen a flop of three, ten and jack. As you could see, any ace or nine would have made you the nut straight. Also, a king or queen would pair you, which might or might not have produced a winning hand. You could have verify your pot odds if you had known the following:
- How much money was in the pot
- How much it would cost you to stay in the hand
- What are your odds were of making the best hand
For this example, let’s say that there had been a $100 in the pot, and it would have cost you $10 to call the bet. Also, for simplicity’s sake, assuming that we were discussing only about making your hand on the next card, and that you would have won only if you had made the straight when playing holdem poker.
In holdem poker, you could have articulated your probability of making the best hand by outlining a ratio of the cards that would have missed you to the cards that would have made your hand. In this case, that would have been thirty-nine to eight. (This representation would be called odds.) Of the forty-seven unseen cards, thirty would have been blanks (cards that would not have made your hand), which eight (the four nines and four aces) would have made you a straight. You could have also expressed this same relationship as a fraction, 8/47, or a shade better than one in six. (This depiction would be called chances.)
Here, the difference between odds and chances would be that odds would normally refer to the improbability of an event. Odds have been conveyed as a ratio, with the bigger number being the ways of missing and the lesser number the ways of hitting. In our poker example, there would be thirty-nine ways of missing the straight and eight of having made it. Thus in the game of poker, the odds against having made the straight would have been thirty-nine to eight. Chances have been defined as a fraction, with the denominator being the total number of possibilities and the numerator the ways of hitting. In our example, there would have been forty-seven possible products, of which eight would have made the hand. Thus, the chances of having made the straight would have been 8/47.
Now, it would be the time to merge those three points above to decide the correct course of action in holdem poker. It would be erroneous to automatically call with your hand simply because you were to have a straight draw. You would have to make sure that the pot would be presenting you the proper odds (the right price) to call
In holdem poker, you could identify the price the pot would tender you as both a ratio (in this case, it would be hundred to ten); and as a fraction (10/10). Reduced, you have been getting pot odds of ten to one on your call. What this would mean is that as long as you would make your hand more than one time in 11, it would be lucrative for you to draw. Since your chances of improving you king and queen to a straight would be about one in six, calling would clearly be the right play.
What about an inside draw? With this holding, you would have only four ways to make a straight. This would make your chances 4/47, or just slightly better than one in twelve. With the same size pot and cost to call, a fold would now have been in order, since you would not be able to make your hand often enough for drawing at it to be lucrative. If either the pot was bigger or the amount of the bet was lower, however, calling frequently would be correct when playing holdem poker.
How Much Math Do You Need?
So, would you have to be a math wiz to play holdem poker? Absolutely not! Poker at its core has been a game of people and logical thought. The ability to do difficult mathematical equations in your head, while remarkable, would probably not be of much advantage to you here. You would have had to, however, have a good working awareness of odds and probability. Whether you would have done this in your head on the spot, or taken some time to learn by rote the odds of making certain poker draws, you should not have ignored this aspect of poker.
Failure to learn the odds might have caused you not only to call when you should have mucked, but also to fold when you should have called. It would have been entirely acceptable to commit to memory a chart that showed the odds of completing the various draws. Doing so would have saved you from having to make on-the-spot calculations. (You will find an odds chart for various poker draws in the Appendix.)
In several cases, your choice whether to have gone for a poker draw would have been quite evident. For instance, suppose you would have had to pay $10 to draw to a flush (nine cards would have made the hand) when there had been $300 in the pot. The pot had presented thirty-to-one and the odds against having made your hand would have only been thirty-eight to nine (a little worse than four to one). In a circumstance like this, your poker hand would have played quite automatically.
However, situations would have often arisen in which your constant participation in the pot would have been dubious, due to the close configuration between the cost of remaining in the hand, the size of the pot, and the odds against having made the draw. For instance, if you would have had to call $20 to win $60, and the odds against having made your hand had been three to one, it would have been a practically dead heat. Mathematically, it wouldn’t have mattered whether you had called or folded. It would have been a break-even proposal either way.
There would have been many close, ‘coin flip’ type choices in poker, in which it wouldn’t have seemed to matter which choice you would have made. However, good poker players had learned to include additional features in their scrutiny of a hand. Choices that at first would have appeared to be cases of ‘six to one, half a dozen of the other’ would have become clear-cut after advance study. But, that is what the rest of the book will be about.
Playing Before the Flop
The most significant choice you would have made during a hand of holdem poker would have been whether to enter the pot in the first place. As a winning poker player, your supreme single source of profit would have come from those who had played hands they should have folded. The mistake of entering a pot with a minor or inferior hand could have easily been compounded by having developed the hand just enough on the flop to have carried on with it until the end.
For instance, hands such as eight and six offsuit (not suited, that is, of different suits) would have seldom, if ever, have been played, for the reason that even when they would have developed (by flopping a pair or a straight draw), they often hadn’t won the pot. In this way, an early mistake of having played a bad hand would have paved the way for the rest of the hand, which could have turned out to be quite costly in holdem poker.
The tips in this section will help you to avoid this trap, by showing a tight-aggressive method to hand selection. We couldn’t possibly encompass every possible situation, but we will hope that the use of various examples will be valuable in forming common guidelines in your mind as to how to play holdem poker before the flop.
Note: This segment will consist of statements like ‘raise with a pair of jacks.’ You should construe that to mean that raising in the circumstance under discussion will be accurate when you are holding any hand equal to or better than a pair of jacks. Comparable statements will appear about the play of unpaired cards and cards that will be suited (of the same suit). For instance, if you were to see ‘raise with Ace and jack,’ of course that would mean that if you have an ace and queen you should also raise.