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Online poker strategy is a hot topic through the Internet since the explosion of poker’s popularity in the past decade. Since the inception of televised poker (most notably by ESPN), online gambling web sites have invested millions of dollars’ worth of advertising on television networks for the sole purpose of luring poker aficionados to their sites. While advertising for online gambling isn’t legal in many states, these poker web sites easily sidestep the legality by advertising “for fun” sites where customers cannot use their very own money, with a near-identical domain name registered for actual monetary commitment nearby. As such, online poker draws countless new customers each day and fortunes are won and lost at Internet card tables.
Like any type of entertainment, online poker has experts willing to sell their secrets to the highest bidders. Professional poker players have published dozens of books filled with their advice and bookstores are already quick to follow suit, dedicating valuable shelf space to these online guides. Online poker strategy is just not terribly not the same as that of table poker, as well as a novice player will benefit from the tactics of both online and table poker books.
Much of the strategy behind winning consistently at poker is dependent upon the mathematics of the game. As a player has no real way to learn what cards his opponent is holding, there isn’t any 100% effective outcome for poker players (hence the term, gambling). On the contrary, knowing the math behind the poker shall permit the player to understand situations where calling or folding, determined by nothing but the odds of the game, is in his or her best interest.
All the math behind poker depends on the simple fact that you’ll find 52 cards in a deck. In a game of Hold ‘Em poker, a player receives two cards, in a game of Omaha four, in a game of Stud, five. Thus, while a player isn’t going to know which cards are within the hands of the opponents, the remaining cards (a certain few of which are needed for a successful, winning hand) are in plain sight for someone to count. Using these facts, a player can determine the total amount of cash in the pot to calculate what is called “pot odds”. Pot odds will either favor the player based upon the rewards weighed against the statistical chance of success, or favor folding his or her hand given the lack of a successful hand being dealt.
As an example, say a Hold ‘Em player needs a single diamond to make a flush, which would be the best hand available to any player in this particular scenario. While you can find 13 diamonds in the deck, the Hold ‘Em player has 2 of them and there are two on the table (as five are required for a flush). Thus, you will find only 9 potential diamonds within the remaining cards. If the player has two cards, his opponent has two cards, and you’ll find four cards on the table, there are 44 cards remaining, a 9/44 chance of hitting a diamond or approximately a one in five chance.
Within this scenario, the pot is $50, with a $5 call for the player with the flush draw. The potential payout is ten to one while the odds are one to five — thus, the pot odds favor calling the $5 for the payout is double the possibility of winning the hand. While this particular hand might only be won 20% of the time, if view it will be played out 100 times, the player would statistically be very likely to lose around $400 while winning around $1000.
