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Implied Odds

Implied Odds are an advanced concept that have an important part of any no-limit holdem cash game.  The importance of Implied Odds are diminished greatly in a tournament when your tournament life is the most important thing (but they do play an important part in early rounds in deep-stacked tournaments when calling a raise represents no more than 2-3% of your stack)

What exactly are implied odds? Most people do not know the answer to this question. The people who do have an idea about what implied odds are, do not fully understand how they work. I will start be giving the definition of implied odds, then illustrating them with an example.

Implied Odds are the odds you are getting on a call that take into consideration the money you will win in future bets if you hit your hand. You make implied odds calls when you do not have the correct pot odds to make a call, but you will recoup AT LEAST what was needed to make the call in the first place.

Sounds confusing, right? I knew what implied odds were, but never fully understood them until I was at a WPT Boot camp where Mark Seif was the instructor. Mark gave an example that made the concept of implied odds crystal clear.

An example to illustrate Implied Odds.

Lets say you are at a table playing 50/100 No Limit Holdem against one other person. That person happens to be Bill Gates - the richest person in the world. You have $20,000 in front of you. Bill Gates has taken a lot of cash out of his bank account and has $10,000,000 in front of him. He has you outchipped 500:1.

On the first hand you get:

You call and Bill Gates checks.

Pot: $200

The flop comes:

You check and the Bill Gates bets $100. Further, he shows you his cards. He has:

The question is, do you make the call?

The student of the game will follow the following thought process:

He has a pair of aces and I have a pair of twos. I need one of the two remaining twos to beat him. That gives me two outs. I am a 22:1 underdog to hit a two on the next card, and a 12:1 underdog to hit the two by the river. The pot now has $300 in it ($200 preflop and the $100 bet on the flop). My pot odds are 3:1, which is less than my hand odds. Therefore, I should fold.

There is nothing wrong with this logic. It is a straight-forward and tight way to play poker. By looking at the pot odds, you should fold.

Now, lets change the situation a little bit. Pretend that after Bill Gates bets $100, he says that if you call, he will move all in before the turn card is shown. How does this affect the situation, or has nothing changed?

Your pot and hand odds have not changed. You are still a 22:1 underdog to make your hand on the turn and you STILL only have 3:1 true pot odds. But, remember that Bill is going to move all-in before the turn card is dealt. Essentially, he is going to bet $10 Million in the dark. The smart poker player will now analyze the situation like this:

I have 3:1 pot odds on a 22:1 underdog. However, if I hit my 2 on the turn, I stand to double up and make $19,800 more. If I make this call, 22 times I will miss and lose $100. The other one time, I will hit the two, and I will win an additional $19,800. Therefore, my true pot odds are 19800:100 (I am wagering $100 to potentially win $19,800 more). This equates to 198:1. These are the Implied Odds in the situation. Surely, risking $100 to win $19,800 on a long-shot is worth it when you have hand odds of 22:1. This concept is the heart of implied odds.

Now, before you go making all kinds of dumb calls trying to justify the call as an Implied Odds Call, there are several factors that MUST be met before you can make an implied odds call. They are (but not limited to):

1) Both you and your opponent MUST have a deep stack. You BOTH must have in excess of 100 Big Blinds. If you call a $50 bet with a $100 stack and attribute this to implied odds, you are on the wrong track. (The most you can win in the situation is an an additional $50, which does not even come close to even making up for the bad pot odds you are getting).

2) Your opponent must pay you off if you hit. If you hit your 22:1 set draw to your opponent's pair of aces, you bet out, and your opponent folds, then you made a losing play.

3) Your draw must not present a threat on the board. Flushes are NOT good hands for implied odds calls. Most players will slow down when the third card of a suit falls on the board.

The best hands for implied odds calls are set draws (you have a pocket pair on an unpaired board) and gutshot straight draws.

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