Pot Equity

Can someone explain Pot Equity to me? I'm reading "Get Started in Hold Em" and I see it mentioned a lot, but how do you determain exactly how much % you have off the start? If I have Queen Ace suited, what is my pot equity?

What about if I have something like pocket threes?

equity is situational, not just based on the absolute strength of your hand.

you put your villain on a range of hands and you calculate how likely you are to win against that range of hands. multiply that percentage by the amount in the pot, and there's your pot equity right there. one can say it simply means how much of the pot "belongs to you", hence, "equity".

let's say that you have AKss on a 245ss flop and you put your villain on TT+. your equity in this pot would be about 58%, since you are likely to win this pot 58% of the time if the all the money went in on that flop.

go dl pokerstove and play around with it for a bit =D

oh.. and the way this is done is by calculating your outs which will give you the winning hand at showdown. in the same example as above, you have your 9 spade outs, 4 outs to a 3, and most likely 6 more outs to either an ace or a king, giving you a whopping 19 outs which will give you a winning hand.

you have 19 outs on the turn card, and the chance that you'll hit it is 19/47. if it bricks, 19 out of 46 remaining cards can help you. the probability that you won't hit either is 28/47 * 27/46 or about 35%, which means you will win it about 65% of the time.

the percentage that pokerstove gives is a little less than that because we put AA and KK into villains range, which removes our ace and king outs + there is a small chance that underpairs can improve to a set on the river if they fall behind on the turn.

or put it this way... you have AK on the BTN in a 6max game and someone raises from UTG + 1. the standard is to 3bet this guy here because you beat every hand that is unpaired and even against 22-QQ you have about 50% equity to win the hand at showdown.

in another example, you open AK from the BTN and some huge huge nit 3bets you from the BB. if your read is that he 3bets ONLY QQ+ then your equity preflop is dramatically reduced to 30% and you'd elect to fold AK preflop.

So it boils down to this:

# of my outs / # of remaining cards (or was 47 and 48 static numbers?) = my pot equity.

In order to call, the amount I have to call should be less than or equal to my pot equity times the current amount in the pot.. correct?

How did you come to the conclusion of 28/47 * 27/46?

Where do other players come in when determining pot equity? I read somewhere that if your equity is above the average fair share at the table, you should still call... so if I have 35% equity, and theres 5 people in (100 / 5 people = 20%), I should call.. right?

I found this article which does a pretty good job if explaining it:
http://www.pokerlistings.com/strategy...-calculate-pot-odds-and-equity-equity

I had no idea that the 4/2 rule was for pot equity, I thought it was just odds. I'd been using pot equity longer than I thought lol.

you have 47 unseen cards on the flop and 48 on the turn. since you have 19 outs, 28 out of 47 cards will NOT help you on the turn and 27 out of 46 cards will NOT help you on the river. the odds of this happening on the turn and river combined is 28/47 * 27/46 = 35%, that is, 35% of the time you will not hit your outs and lose.

and yes. one would make the call when it costs less than or equal to your equity in the pot. one example is when you have the nut flush draw and two people went all in in front of you. let's say that the pot odds your getting is about 3:1 and if you hit your nut flush, you will win the pot unless the board pairs. you will hit your flush and hold approximately 30% of the time so you'd elect to call getting almost direct odds.