Introduction to polarized betting
What it means to play a GTO style of poker is to be balanced at all times. This means that regardless of the situation, in theory…
How to use an Odds Calculator
An Odds Calculator (also known as an Equity Calculator) is a tool that helps you explore how often you will win at poker.
You enter your hand and villain’s hand or range and the calculator will tell you how often you will win if the hand is played all the way to the river. Your chance of winning is called equity. Note that the actual chance of winning will depend on bluffing and other factors – equity is only telling you your chance of winning IF all cards are dealt and there is a showdown. If your equity is 60%, that means that if you were to deal cards all the way to the river, let us say a 1000 times, you would win 600 times. This is actually how an Odds Calculator works, but it is dealing the cards 100 000 times or more to give more accurate results.
For example, you can check how often AKs will win against QQ and find that it will 46% of time:
You can also calculate your chance at winning at flop, turn and river with different boards:
In the example above we have used a specific hand for the villain. It is interesting to use this when you are all-in against a villain and you see their cards. However, it is more useful to use the Odds Calculator to explore your equity against villain’s range. Before you see villain’s cards you can almost never assign them a specific hand, but you can put them on a range. For example, you might have observed that the villain is only going all-in with aces, kings and AK. Or, if you have no observation, this also happens to be the simplified GTO range (Game Theory Optimal). What is the equity of JJ against that range?
You can either choose a predefined preflop range or edit the range by tapping in the preflop range chart. The Poker Trainer Odds Calculator has some unique features:
- Built-in GTO based preflop ranges for all preflop scenarios
- Check odds for preflop all-in by entering pot and amount to call
Checking odds for preflop all-in is a feature that none of the other Odds Calculators have. Have you ever wondered if you have pot odds to call an all-in from a 90 bb stack with JJ? You can calculate it yourself by figuring out the pot odds or break-even percentage. But that is both a bit mathematical and even if you know how to do it, it takes time. With Poker Trainer Odds Calculator you just enter the pot before the (potential) call and the amount you need to call and find out immediately. Let us say you are in LJ and raise to 2.5 bb, HJ fold, CO raise to 7.5 bb and all other players fold. You 4-bet to 20 bb and CO goes all-in to 90 bb. Should you call? The pot before the call is your bet at 20, plus your opponents 90. You raised to 20, so the amount you need to call is 70.
It turns out you should call:
This example is a bit sensitive to the read on villain, what if it turns-out your read is wrong and villain always has QQ in their range as well? Just tap QQ in the range chart, calculate equity again. It is now 36%. Can you still call?
No, you will only win 36% of the time, but you would need to win 39% of the time to make this a profitable call.
By exploring and playing around with the Odds Calculator you will learn to make profitable calls at the tables. For postflop equity you can also practice in the Postflop exercise to get a better feeling for equity of your hand against villains range on flop, turn and river.
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