Online poker strategy is a hot topic through the Internet considering that the explosion of poker’s popularity in the past decade. Since the inception of televised poker (most notably by ESPN), online gambling web pages have invested millions of dollars’ worth of advertising on television networks for the sole purpose of luring poker aficionados to their sites. While advertising for online gambling is not legal in several states, these poker websites conveniently sidestep the legality by advertising “for fun” sites where customers cannot use their own money, with a near-identical domain name registered for actual monetary commitment nearby. As such, online poker draws countless new customers each day and fortunes are won and lost at Internet card tables.

Like any form of entertainment, online poker has experts ready to sell their secrets to the highest bidders. Professional poker players have published dozens of books filled with their advice and bookstores are already quick to follow suit, dedicating valuable shelf space to these online guides. Online poker strategy is just not terribly not the same as that of table poker, as well as a novice player will take advantage of the tactics of both online and table poker books.

Much of the strategy behind winning consistently at poker is determined by the mathematics of the game. As a player has no real way to learn what cards his opponent is holding, there’s absolutely no 100% effective outcome for poker players (hence the term, gambling). On the flip side, knowing the math behind the poker shall allow the player to understand situations where calling or folding, according to nothing however the odds of the game, is in his or her best interest.

All of the math behind poker depends on the simple fact that there are 52 cards in a deck. In a game of Hold ‘Em poker, a player receives two cards, in a game of Omaha four, in a game of Stud, five. Thus, while a player will not know which cards will be in the hands of the opponents, the remaining cards (a specific few of which are needed for a successful, winning hand) will be in plain sight for anyone to count. Using this information, a player can determine the amount of money in the pot to calculate what is called “pot odds”. Pot odds will either favor the player based upon the rewards weighed against the statistical chance of success, or favor folding his or her hand given the lack of a successful hand being dealt.

For example, say a Hold ‘Em player needs an individual diamond to make a flush, which would be the top hand available to any player in the scenario. While you’ll find 13 diamonds within the deck, the Hold ‘Em player has two of them and there are two on the table (as five are needed for a flush). Thus, there are only 9 potential diamonds within the remaining cards. If the player has two cards, his opponent has two cards, and there are actually four cards on the table, there are actually 44 cards remaining, a 9/44 chance of hitting a diamond or approximately a one in five chance.

In this particular scenario, the pot is $50, with a $5 call for the player with the flush draw. The potential payout is ten to one while the odds are one to five — thus, Click Link the pot odds favor calling the $5 for the payout is double the chance of winning the hand. Although this particular hand might only be won 20% of the time, if it could be played out 100 times, the player would statistically be prone to lose around $400 while winning around $1000.