Texas Holdem Poker Math

If you want to win when gambling at online poker sites you really need to understand the poker math involved. The more you understand the odds and the math in holdem online poker, the better chance you will have at winning money.

The fewer mistakes you make and the more you understand the odds in poker the better your chances will be to win.

In Texas Holdem when you have an unpaired pocket hand you will flop a pair 40% of the time. While that 40% sounds good, in reality only about 27% is for your own hand. The other 13% is where the board pairs. Did you know that your chances of hitting four of a kind when you hold an unpaired pocket is less than one one-thousandth of a percentage point?

If you held something like king-10 the flop would have to come with all three remaining kings or 10’s for that four of a kind to hit. That is something you never see. If you don’t have a pair in your pocket your chances of flopping a full house or hitting a set are very small. That is why pocket pairs are so valuable in Holdem.

The math in Holdem shows that you stand a 4% chance of flopping two pair with an unpaired pocket hand but half of the time when that happens one of those pairs will be on the board. Depending on what your pocket hand is you can flop a straight between 1.3% and 3.3% of the time. Some pocket hands are more likely to hit a straight than others.

These few numbers show that pocket pairs are very valuable before the flop. They need to be bet aggressively. Too many players don’t bet them strongly and perhaps that is because they don’t know the math. Pocket pairs, especially high pocket pairs are good starting hands. They weaken though after the flop.

The goal in poker is to learn the math and use it to make more intelligent decisions. The longer the shot it was to get a good hand such as a straight means that you want to bet aggressively since you will rarely get it. The same thing applies to pocket pairs, suited high connectors, etc. The math in poker gives you reasons for making decisions.

That is why the more you understand the math and the odds, the better you will understand the overall game of poker and the better you will understand the decisions you will be facing at the online poker table.