Is poker about skill or luck? This is a debate that seems to have no end. For players who are new and many poker free online games players who play for laughs it is, or at least, seems like luck and for them it is as they apply no logic to their game.

For players who play with logic and common sense it's a skill game and one core part of that skill game is some simple math that allows the player to essentially create their own luck. This simple math, you may have heard of, is called pot odds, implied odds and rounding.

Pot Odds relate to the quantity of chips that sit on the middle of the board resulting from bets, call, raises etc. The sum of all those chips represents the size of the current pot.

Suppose there are 400 chips in the pot and to continue you need to call with a 100 chip bet. This means you have Pot Odds of 4 to 1, that is, the 400 chips in the pot divided by the 100 chips that you need to bet.

Implied Odds
Relate to the number of chips that are stacked in front of your competitors stacks in the current hand, plus the number of chips that are in the current pot. Lets say you and 2 players are still in a hand.

Player a has 2000 chips, Player b, 3000 chips. There are 1,000 chips in the pot. If you need to call a 400 chip bet, you will get Implied Odds of 15 to 1. This comes from the 6,000 chips total between the 2 other players and 1000 in the pot vs the 400 chips you need to use.

Rounding - Making Life Simpler
You start a hand with 2 pocket cards so of course 50 cards are unknown to you, as such you use 50 as the base of calculations. We will not bother about there being 47 unseen cards post flop and 46 post turn. We stick with 50, it is close enough and makes life a lot easier.

For example - You have a King Queen unsuited as your pockets, and the flop is 10, Jack, 4 rainbow (unsuited flop). This means there 8 'outs' to an open end straight draw; the four 9's and four Aces that we haven't seen.

So there is an 8 in 50 chance of catching an 'out' on the turn; and, 8 in 50 which equates to 16 in 100, a 16% chance of hitting our desired straight on the turn, basically 1 in 6 chance.

In this example, if you're not getting a minimum of 5 to 1 Pot Odds there is no sense chasing the 9's and Aces. But as this is only break even it's not worth it, in pot odds terms you should fold.

You should always be looking for an advantage with every bet. If 5 to 1 is break even, then 6 to 1 is a 20% advantage, 8 to 1 a 60% advantage. So, if you have a Pot Odds advantage play the hand, for me a 50% advantage is acceptable but play a bit to settle on a level that is OK for you.

However, playing advantage only Pot Odds hands on their own won't give you big success. For big success and to beta up on both good and bad players requires timely application of Implied Odds which, at the right time, can be a lot more powerful than simple Pot Odds.

In the example used above, Pot Odds may dictated we fold. But what if you are playing against some crazy donk with a stack much larger than the pot? If we have hit the our open ended draw with any 9 or Ace at the Turn or River we'll knock such a player out and take all his chips.

So you should consider the Implied Odds as well as the Pot Odds while being sure you don't take excessive risks. If the Pot Odds are 'respectable' meaning within 25% of ideal and Implied are good then go for it but be sure to practice on free poker games first! I hope this guide to implied odds was useful, see NoPayPOKER.com for more poker free online games training lessons.