Knowing your probabilities is a must for texas hold’em. All good players use odds to determine their actions. You must know your chances of finishing your drawing hands and if the bet coming to you with the right amount of money in the pot is correct. So when is it right to chase those gutshots, flushes, and your overcards? To know when it is correct or not to play it you must understand your odds.

You must first make sure that the hand you are drawing for will give you the best hand. You must not be drawing to a hand that will not win even if you hit.

There are basically three situations you will see after the flop.

Either you totally missed the board where you should check or fold.

You hit the flop well and hold a strong hand where you should bet or raise.

Or you will have a drawing hand where you do not currently have a strong hand but have the possibility of making a strong hand on the turn or river. Such draws or for flushes, straights, or top pair.

When you are drawing there or a few tools you will need to help make your decision. The main tool is calculating your “Pot Odds”

First you must know your hand odds Once you determine your chances of hitting your draw you must then determine if the bet combined with the amount of money in the pot gives you the right circumstance to call.

You must keep track of how much money is in the pot and keep track what the call to you will be. Ok so lets say you have 6 outs or about 13% chance of catching on the turn or river. The pot is $90 with a $10 call to you. This will make the pot $100. You divide the pot by the bet (100/10) which would be 10. You now take 100 divided by 10 and that give you 10% which gives your pot odds. If the pot odds % is less than your hand odds then it is correct to call.

So if the bet was $20 to a pot of $140 (140/20) would be 7. You now take 100 divided by 7 and that gives you over 14% which would have you the incorrect pot odds to call this bet with your 13% hand odds.

Learning to calculate pot odds and implied odds is very important. It doesn’t have to be exact but just a general idea if it is worth it or not is good enough. You’ll rarely be in situations where it is just barely off the odds. Those don’t cost much. What costs a lot is if you rountinely make the wrong decision when to draw