Implied Odds

A close cousin to the idea of Pot Odds, Implied Odds means taking probable future action into account when making a poker decision. What do I mean by that you may ask, well, let me give an example.

Example 1:
You are sitting at the poker table, with an Ace high flush draw, waiting on the river card. The pot is $10. One person has acted before you, betting $3 (that is already in the pot).

Here's your decision, should you bet $3 to see the river card? Looking at the pot odds, you have:

1. 9 outs to complete your flush
2. Using the pot odds chart, you see that the odds of landing your flush on the river are 4.11 to 1 against you.
3. Multiply 4.11 x the $3 bet to get $12.33. That's how big the pot needs to be for you to have "pot odds" to call this bet. The pot is only $10, so the pot odds are not in you favor at the moment.

Here's where implied odds come in

There are still two players to act after you. You feel pretty strongly that one, if not both of them will call if you do. If one of them called, the pot would be $13 instead of $10. Then it would be big enough to give you pot odds to call. If both call, it would be a $16 pot (not including your bet), that's definitely big enough to make calling the right decision.

So, if you take into account the probable future action of your opponents (in this case one of the remaining players will probably call the bet also), you can use the "implied" odds to make a decision about calling or folding.

Depending upon how well you know your opponents, you can sometimes use implied odds on river cards, depending on them to call or make bets after the river.

If you are playing with one or two "calling stations" you may be able to rely on them for a bet even after you make your hand. This is especially true of situations where the draws are less easy to see, like low straight draws.

Poker is an inexact game, which is one of the things that makes it so interesting. Players have to use the information they have to make the most informed decision possible. If you know the tendancies of your opponents, you can make use of that data.

Implied Odds is one of those grey areas of a poker game in which players are using the tendencies of their opponents against them to make better informed decisions.