Playing for Implied Odds

Now that you’ve got a good grounding on the basics of calculating implied odds in general, let’s look at the more specific example of implied odds when playing online poker. It’s the same principle but there are a few key ways that playing at poker online are different from playing live that do impact how you should play.

The biggest difference is that when playing online your opponents are sometimes more often to stack off than they would live, so in some cases your implied odds are better when playing online. The reason behind this is pretty straightforward; no one likes to look stupid and get stacked when playing live. A player that might fold their pocket aces live when a scary river card puts both a potential straight and a flush out there is more likely to click the “Call” button when playing online, as no one is around to laugh and point at them for being a donkey that can’t fold aces.

It’s also much simpler to reload or enter another tournament when playing online, as you just click a button and boom, you’ve got a full stack in front of you again. You don’t have to pull out your wallet or make the walk of the shame to the ATM, which again means that players are more likely to stack off light. Remember, the whole idea behind profitably playing implied odds is whether or not you can get paid off when you hit, so areas such as these are where you want to focus.

These are just a few examples of things to consider with implied odds when playing in online poker sites. For more tips, strategy articles, and reviews of online sites, check out Pokerjunkie, which is one of the top resources for online players.

Posted by Joel on Apr 29 2010. Filed under Poker Strategy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry