Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
You will usually hear poker players talk in terms of odds.
You will usually hear poker players talk in terms of odds. For example, if there are 150 chips in the pot and you have to call 100 more, you are getting 1.5-to-1 because for every 1 chip you are putting into the pot, there are 1.5 chips already in it. Another example: if there are 300 chips in the pot and you have to put 100 in, you are getting 3-to-1.
You can translate odds to percentages
You can translate odds to percentages by dividing the second number by the total of both numbers and multiplying by 100, so for 3-to-1, you compute 1/4 × 100 = 25 percent which means you have to win 25 percent of the time to break even. If you’re getting 321-to-91, it would be [91/(321 + 91)] × 100 = 91/412 × 100 = 22 percent.