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One thing all good players do is keep track of how big the pot gets during every hand they play.  They count the bets or the money, and know exactly how much is in the pot, every hand, without exception.  It’s impossible to make informed decisions if you don’t know what your pot odds are.

Learning how to count the pot takes practice.  You need to pay attention to how many players put in how much money on each round of betting, and keep track of this in your head.  It’s not easy at first, but it gets easier as you practice.

In a limit game, you should count bets, not money.   If five people see the flop without a raise, there are five bets in the pot.  If there’s a raise, and two people call, but the blinds fold, there are seven bets in the pot.  You can ignore folded small blinds because they almost never make any real difference anyway, plus it somewhat compensates for the drop or rake.

In limit you must compensate for the bet sizes between the first/second, and third/fourth rounds.  For the first two rounds, you’re counting small bets, but for the last two rounds you’re counting big bets.  Big bets count for two small ones!  If you fail to make this adjustment on the third and fourth round, you’re going to make a lot of mistakes!  At a ten handed poker table, there will frequently be large pots with many bets, so don’t be surprised when you add up like 15 small bets on the first two rounds.  Just remember, when it comes to the last two rounds, 15 small bets is only 7.5 big bets!  You never need to count bets in any increments smaller than a half a bet, and usually a half a bet won’t make any difference, so don’t be worried if you’re slightly off.  Just don’t be WAY off!!

If you happen to lose track, don’t panic or worry, it happens, especially at first.  Just always remember these two points:

1. if the pot is big, be inclined to call

2. if the pot is small, be inclined to fold

In no-limit games you must count the amounts of money that go in each round.  This is somewhat more difficult than it is in limit hold’em, but in no-limit it’s far more critical that you count accurately.  This is one of the reasons why I recommend that everyone learn how to play in limit games before trying to switch to no limit.

There’s no magic formula for counting the pot; you’ll need to pay attention and practice.   You should practice at first in hands that you’re not playing, because you can think about counting and not about what your decision is going to be.  However, hands you’ve folded don’t matter, it’s the hands you’re IN that matter, so you must learn how to do this while playing your hand and making your decisions as well. Don’t be afraid to stand and watch a game and just practice counting the pot.

The information you get from counting the pot is crucial to what decisions you should make!  Although difficult to master at first, in time it will become second nature and you won’t even think about it.

PokerGuru

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