Written By: TheShortStack.co.uk
We’ve all been there, sitting at a poker table with five or six other players trying to decide whether to call the big raise that’s been made or whether to fold your hand and live to fight another day.
There’s so much to think about when trying to decide on the correct course of action. What kind of player is your opponent? Was his raise in line with the way he’s played the rest of the night? If not, is he bluffing? What cards could he have? The list goes on …
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However, the first thing that a player should do when deciding whether to play a hand or not is to calculate the pot odds. This will give him a good understanding of whether calling the current bet offers him good value for his money, and it should heavily influence the final decision.
In the heat of the battle that’s a lot easier said than done, especially when most of the online poker rooms only give you about a minute or so to make your decision. You need to calculate those pot odds quickly, and for those of us who don’t exactly excel at math, that minute just isn’t long enough to figure out some complex equation – let alone think about any other factors that might influence our decision to call or not.
So it’s with a big sigh of relief that I say there’s a simple way of calculating pot odds. A method that only requires you to use simple multiplication and addition to figure out whether you’re making a good call or not. In poker circles it’s known as The Rule of 42 (or The Rule of 4-2) .
Now it should be pointed out that The Rule of 42 cannot be used to calculate the effectiveness of your hole cards. It only comes into effect once the Flop has been dealt. From that point, it’s simply a case of calculating the number of outs that you have (the number of cards that can be dealt for you to make the winning hand) and then using the following formulas:
Immediately Post Flop:
(Outs x 2) + 2
After the Turn Card has Been Dealt:
(Outs x 4)
To clarify, let’s look at the Rule of 42 in a gameplay situation.
In our example, let’s say that you’ve been dealt As 10s in the hole and limped in on the button.
After the turn, the board looks like this: 6s Kd 3s
You’re one card away from the nut flush, which you understandably believe will win the pot. But what are the chances of you getting the extra spade that you need to take down those chips?
As things currently stand, you need one of the remaining nine spades to be dealt on the turn or the river. (There are 13 spades in the deck minus the two you were originally dealt and the two that have come up on the flop).
The Rule of 42 states that in order to calculate the odds of another spade appearing in the next two cards, we need to multiply the number of outs by four:
9 x 4 = 32%
The precise figure is 32.6% so this method is certainly accurate enough and only requires a fraction of the brainwork.
So the turn comes up: 8h
Our calculations now need to change slightly to multiply the number of outs by two and then add on another two:
(9 x 2) + 2 = 20%
So the odds of you getting your final spade on the river is 20% (or 5-1), but how does that help us decide whether to call or not?
Well, it’s simple. If you have a 20% chance of winning the pot, the cost of your call should not be larger than one fifth of the pot total. In our first example where we had a 32% chance of our card hitting, you can go ahead and call a bet of up to one-third the size of the pot and still feel good about the fact that you’ve made a sensible call.
Summary
The Rule of 42 is a great way to quickly calculate your pot odds without having to go through complex mathematics.
With a bit of practice, these kinds of calculations will become second nature adding a whole, new level to your poker strategy and giving you a big advantage over your opponents – especially if you’re playing small stakes where the chances are good that your opponents won’t be analyzing their hands in a similar manner.
For those playing higher stakes, pot odds are a vital part of the game. The Rule of 42 will help speed up your calculations, giving you time to think about other aspects of the hand before deciding whether or not to throw your chips into the middle of the table!