Texas Holdem 4 2 Rule
Pot Odds Strategy Articles
Calculating poker pot odds is a very important part of being successful. Pot odds in poker give you a great sense of your chances of winning a hand, and whether or not you should even be in the hand to begin with. Not all bets are made equal after all. Sometimes you have to bet an amount that’s equal to half the size of the pot or more and sometimes your bet size is a tenth of the pot size or less. What determines if that’s really a good value for you is your odds of making the hand you are looking for.
When you’re calculating poker pot odds, you actually have to calculate two separate things. First, you need to figure out the odds that you’ll make a hand, or get a certain card on the turn or river. Then, you need to figure out the size of the bet you need to make in relation to the pot. What you’re looking are better odds of making your hand than the pot size odds. Both of these combined will give you the pot odds you need.
In Texas Hold'em, you may use any combination of your two hole cards, or leave one of them out altogether. You can use four cards from the community cards and one from your hand, or two from your hand combined with three from the community board. Omaha is a bit trickier. You must use 2 of your hole cards when forming your best possible hand. The 4/2 rule is fairly quick once you can figure out how many outs you have. You take the amount of outs you have after the flop and multiply it by 4. If youre going for that inside straight, you get 16. Turn that into a percentage and you get 16%; thats the chances that youll get your card on either the turn or the river. For example, in a $2/$4 Limit game the small blind is $1 and the big blind is $2. In a $15/$30 Limit game, the small blind is $10 and the big blind is $15. In Pot Limit and No Limit games, the games are referred to by the size of their blinds (for example, a $1/$2 Hold’em game has a small blind of $1 and a big blind of $2).
To start with, take a look at your cards and see how many potential outs you have. Outs of course are the different cards in the deck that could make your hand for you. If you’re drawing to make a flush, with 2 spades out on the flop and 2 in your hand, there are potentially 9 spades left in the deck. With 5 cards that you know, your own hand and the flop, there are 47 cards left in the deck. 47 compared to 9 is roughly 5-1 or a 20% chance of you hitting your flush on the turn or the river. Drawing to a flush gives you a lot of options, but not all hands come with 9 outs. If you’re trying to draw for an inside straight, the outs you’ll have are only 4, which cuts your chances by more than half.
Calculating Poker Pot Odds using 4/2 Rule
As you see, calculating poker pot odds lets you know where you stand. An inside straight, when you determine the pot odds, is not worth as much chasing as a flush, which has so many more potential outs. A great method for quickly calculating pot odds is called the 4/2 rule. The 4/2 rule is fairly quick once you can figure out how many outs you have. You take the amount of outs you have after the flop and multiply it by 4. If you’re going for that inside straight, you get 16. Turn that into a percentage and you get 16%; that’s the chances that you’ll get your card on either the turn or the river. If you don’t get it on the turn, you multiply your outs by 2. You’re left with a 8% chance of getting the card you need on the river, not exactly the pot odds you want to see.
Now you know how to get the odds for whether or not you will hit your cards and make your hands. Next comes calculating the pot odds for the size of your bet. For this you compare the amount of chips in the pot compared to the amount of chips you need to bet. With 250 chips in a pot, if you have to make a 25 chip bet, the pot odds are 10-1. What that means is for every one chip you bet, you can win 10 chips.
The key to determining whether or not you should make a bet and stay in a hand is comparing the pot odds of the chips to the odds that you’ll make your hand. Going back to the inside straight example, before the turn you have a 16% chance of getting your card and you have to make a bet with 10-1 pot odds. Your 16% is closer to 5-1, and definitely above 10-1, so that is a bet you can safely make. After the turn though, with only an 8% chance of getting your card, that’s less than 10-1. So you shouldn’t make the bet if you are following the rules of calculating poker pot odds.
The problem with this is that if you’re not very practiced it can take a lot of time. You have to figure out the outs of your hand, the size of the pot, the size of the bet you have to make, and compare all of the percentages. It can get confusing even for very good poker players. One great way to avoid all of this is to use the Holdem Genius and Texas Calculatem tools found at best poker software. You’ll get all of the valuable pot odds information you need to make smart decisions, without distracting yourself or taking too much time calculating poker pot odds while playing.
Texas hold 'em (also known as hold'em or holdem) is another version of the standard card game of poker. A dealer shuffles the cards then deals 2 cards to each player and then five community cards are placed by the dealer—a series of three ('the flop') then two additional single cards ('the turn' and 'the river'). Players have the option to check, bet or fold after each deal, i.e. betting may occur prior to the flop, 'on the flop,' 'on the turn,' and 'on the river.'
Texas hold 'em players compete either for an amount of money or chips contributed by the players themselves (this is called the pot). Because the cards are dealt randomly and outside the control of the players, each player attempts to control the amount of money in the pot based on the hand he or she is holding.
The game is made up of a series of hands or deals. At the conclusion of each hand, the pot is usually awarded to one player (although it can on occasions be split). A hand may end at the showdown, in which case the players that are still in play, compare their hands and the highest hand is naturally awarded the pot. Another possible outcome of a hand is when all but one player have folded and given up any claim to the pot, in which case the pot is awarded to the player who has not folded and is therefore still in play
Texas Holdem 4 2 Rule 34
Texas Holdem 4 2 Rule 66
When a Texas Hold'em Poker player wants to play poker, the general objective is not to win every individual hand, but rather to make mathematically and psychologically correct decisions regarding at what point and how much to bet, raise, call or fold. By skilfully making such decisions, successful Texas Hold'em Poker players maximize winnings in the long term.