Pot odds??

[trickrick]

I enjoy a game of poker. I'm not outstanding, but occasionally I win a few games. However now I feel I have hit a bit of a dead-end in terms of refining/improving my game. Much of this is probably do to the fact I am a dumbass and of limited intelligence, but I feel if I am equipped with further tools it may compensate my shortcomings...

One of the phrases I see mentioned a lot is the use of 'pot odds' in deciding whether to make a play or getting value from the pot and the hole cards available... Unfortunately I am struggling to fully understand how this is used in a game. I presume some of the more esteemed players on this forum use this method of calculating a lot, and I wonder if you could explain it to me in laymans's terms ( ) and examples of how it is used to gain an advantage..

Thanks awfully..

[Doc]

An example

You hold KQ on the button. On the turn your opponent goes all-in for 150 chips into a board of AJ28 (rainbow). As he is betting you catch a glimpse of his cards and see that he has A8. Your only chance to win is to catch a ten to make your straight.

There are 4 cards on board, and you have 2 hole cards each. That is 8 cards in total, so there are 44 unknown cards, one of which will come on the river. 4 of those (the 4 tens) will make you the nuts. Anything else and you lose. So 40/44 times you'll lose and 4/44 you'll win.

You are 10/1 to win the hand (i.e. 40/4). To make it worth your while to play, the pot needs to be more than 10 times the amount it costs you to call, i.e. you need 'pot odds' of greater than 10/1. In the above example it costs you 150 to call, so you need there to be more than 1500 in the pot to call. If there was 900 chips for example, your pot odds would be 6/1 (i.e. 900/150)

[DAN DAN]

And if you are like me trick then trying to calculate even a fraction of that before your timer has counted down will have made your head explode.

Think odds are more important in limit and pot limit games and cash game. Still important in NL MTT's but not to the same extent I believe.

Anyone agree or disagree with this. I know I will never know odds as I am mathematically retarded and my brain panics when asked to work any calculations out. I just have a jist of whether a pot is worth chasing or not.

I know this will limit my long term progress but don't know an alternative.

[Doc]

very few people ever need to work these out at the table. You do the calculations afterwards when you think about your game, and very quickly you learn what the pot odds are in various situations. There is a fairly limited number of different scenarios you need to be familiar with. The exceptions are typically so rare that an educated guess on the fly isn't going to hurt you significantly.