Pot odds is the amount of money that's in a pot compared to the price it is to call a bet. For example, if theres $15 in a pot and it costs you $5 to see the next card then you are getting 15-to-5 on your money or 3-to-1. We use pot odds to help us determine if we are in a positve EV situation or a negative EV situation. After figuring out our pots odds, which is the easiest part, we have to figure out if our hand equity is good enough to make the call.

To figure out how much hand equity we need, we first must convert our pot odds into a percentage. So if we are getting 3-to-1 pot odds then we need a hand that will win 1 out of every 4 times (equal to 25%) we play it for a call to be profitable. If we are getting 4-to-1 pot odds then we need a hand that will win the hand 1 out of every 5 times (equal to 20%) we play it for a call to be profitable. Do you see the pattern? Remember, the bigger your pot odds, the less your hand equity has to be to make a profitable call. If your having trouble converting your pot odds to percentages use this short list below to help you figure it out.

-1-to-1 PO: You need a hand that has at least 50% equity
-2-to-1 PO: You need a hand that has at least 33% equity
-3-to-1 PO: You need a hand that has at least 25% equity
-4-to-1 PO: You need a hand that has at least 20% equity

Figuring out Hand Equity
Figuring out hand equity is actually quite simple. The easiest way to do it is to use the rule of two and four. This rule shows you the % of catching the card you need with one and two cards to come. For example, let's say that we have a flush draw (nine outs). How do we know it's nine outs? Because there are 13 cards for every suit and if we hold two and there are two more on the board then we have 9 more that we can still hit.To figure out the % of hitting our flush on the turn we multiply our number of outs by two. To figure out the % of hitting our flush on the river, we multiply our number of outs by four. Let's say that after figuring the math we find out that our flush draw has an %18 chance of hitting on the turn and a %36 chance of hitting on the river. How big would our pot odds have to be to make a call if someone moved all-In on the flop?

Well we know that our hand equity with two cards to come is 36%. This means that we would need to be getting at least 2-to-1 pot odds to make the call. Anything better than 2-to-1 pot odds and we would be seeing a profit in the long run

Implied Odds
Sometimes your not going to get the correct odds to justify making a call. This is where implied odds comes into play. Implied odds is the amount you predict to win if you do in fact, hit your draw. Whenever you have very good implied odds you can call a bet with a draw (even though you don't have correct pot odds) because you figure that if you hit your hand you will get paid off big time.

For example, let's say there is $30 in a pot. You have a flush draw (36% equity) and your oppnent just bet $50 making the pot $80 total. You have to call $50 into the $80 pot to see the next card. Since you would only be getting somewhere around 1.7-to-1 pot odds (80-to-50), it wouldn't be profitable to make the call. However, let's say that our opponent has $450 left in his stack and we have about the same. If we factor in our implied odds (the odds of him paying us off if we hit our flush) then you would essentially be calling $50 to win $450 which is equal to 9-to-1 pot odds. Clearly a call. Do you see how even though our pot odds weren't good enough to make the call, our implied odds allowed us to make the call?

Here are some factors to consider about implied odds:

-If your opponent is short stacked then your implied odds go way down. Why? Because you can't expect to win much more off of him even if you do hit your hand.
-Your implied odds go down if you telegraphed your hand. If your opponent knows that you were on a draw then he's going to be less likely to pay you off on the river.
-Is your hand disguised? If your hand is well disguised then your opponent might not see it and pay you off.
-How scary is the board? If the board is scary he probably won't pay you off fearing you have a big hand.
-Is your opponent a calling station? If your opponent is a calling station then you have huge implied odds because he's going to call you down with a wide range of hands after you hit your draw.