Implied odds in poker

Implied odds in poker is an important concept to understand in order to become a winning player. Good players realize that you shouldn’t only consider what the pot odds are paying you for the current bet. Sometimes it may be justified to try drawing to a strong hand even if the pot presently is not giving you sufficient pot odds, because you think you may win more bets when if you hit. This is when you have the implied odds to call, because you are taking into account future bets.

If for example you have a draw to an ace high flush on the flop on a $1/$2 table. You are last to act and face a one dollar bet. The pot is four dollars. Your odds to hit your draw is a bit more then 4:1 but the pot odds is only 4:1 to make the flush. The current pot does not justify a call. However, you think you will get at least one extra bet from your opponents if you hit your draw so therefore you should call because you are getting the implied odds.

Other implications to think about with regard to implied odds. You want to give your opponent worse odds to draw to a better hand. As stated before, you want to pay as little for your draws as possible for them to be more profitable. Of course the less your opponents pay for their draws the more profitable it is for them to call, therefore you want them to pay as much as possible when they are drawing.

Generally calling when you have implied odds is ideal when you have position in the hand and you expect your opponent to have a strong hand. This is important because even if a scare card comes on the river, because your opponent’s range is strong, they will still bet their hand, so you can be confident there will be additional chips going in the middle. And because you have position in the hand, they have to act first.

When you are set mining you also have to take implied odds into account. You can think of implied odds as the approximate amount you will get paid off in future betting rounds if you manage to hit your set. For example, if a player who is UTG open raises 3X the BB with a deep stack of 100+BB then you would be getting good implied odds to call and hit the site. Your implied odds will be much greater with multiple opponents. More opponents mean you can build a bigger pot and get paid off better from your value bets.

Some other things to consider with implied odds is the type of opponent and your table image at the time. You need to be confident that the player will pay you off if you make the best hand. If you have been paying very tight and the players are not very aggressive, then in all likelihood they will play the hand passively if a scare card hits.

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