Implied odds

Implied odds are your pot odds plus the money you expect to win on later streets when your card arrives. The pot of this moment does not tell the whole story: hit your flush draw on the turn and your opponent often pays another bet or two after that. Thanks to that extra money, a call that loses according to the bare pot odds can still be profitable. The skill is judging when that extra money really comes, and when you are fooling yourself.

The gap between price and chance

Take a flush draw on the turn: nine outs, one card to come, so roughly 19 percent, about 4 to 1. If you do not immediately see where those nine come from, read counting outs first. There is $10 in the pot and your opponent bets $5. You pay 5 to win 15: 3 to 1, while your hand needs 4 to 1. According to the direct sum this is a fold. Do count it cleanly: your opponent’s bet counts towards what you can win, your own call does not. Anyone who mixes those two up makes every price look better than it is.

The sum with the future included

Now the implied odds. If you expect your opponent to pay another $10 on average on the river when your flush comes in, then in reality you win not 15 but about $25 for your $5. That is 5 to 1, comfortably more than the 4 to 1 you need, and so the call becomes good. Put it as a question: how much still has to come in later to close the gap, and is that amount realistic given your opponent’s stack and playing style? If he can pay at most $3 more, folding stays right. Alongside working it out with the free pot odds calculator, this judgement comes quickly with practice.

When implied odds really exist

Three conditions decide whether the future money is more than wishful thinking. One: deep stacks, because what is no longer behind cannot be paid. Two: a hidden draw. A gutshot straight draw barely makes the board scarier, so an opponent with top pair often keeps paying. A third card of the same suit is something everyone can see, and then the payer shuts down. Three: an opponent who actually pays, such as someone who rarely lets go of top pair. Against a careful player who gives up on every scary board, your implied odds shrink to almost nothing.

Reverse implied odds: the shadow side

There is a mirror image too. Some hands lose extra money exactly when they come in. A low flush draw can run into a higher one: you both hit, you pay everything, and that one hand costs you a whole stack. The same goes for the bottom end of a straight. This is called reverse implied odds: the hidden cost of a hand that occasionally finishes second in a big pot. Subtract that cost honestly before you talk yourself into a nice price. So with every draw, do not only ask whether you hit it; ask what happens in the hands where you both hit.

The trap: implied odds as an excuse

At low stakes the term is mostly used as an excuse to call every draw. If you recognise yourself in that, use this test: before your call, say concretely how much you expect to win later, from whom, and why that player is going to pay. If you cannot do it in one sentence, these are not implied odds, this is hope. Good players use the idea to approve the occasional narrow call, not to argue away every bad price.