While I think it's safe to affirm that most Texas Holdem players are not particularly gifted when it comes to calculation, there is just no way around the fact that there is indeed a mathematical side to the game. This is no high-level mathematics however, so those of you who are not particularly skilled with numbers shouldn't feel alarmed. Pure calculation can tell you what the correct decision is in a particular situation however that will always only be the mathematically correct decision.

It will not account for reads you make on your opponents, for various gut feelings and intimidation attempts such as bluffing. In a word, the mathematically correct decision may not be the correct decision under all circumstances. Basically the game covers two separate planes: a mathematics based one and a psychology based one. Of the two, the mathematics based one is the simpler, and infinitely easier to master than the psychology based one.

Let's see what were actually talking about though. Even if you've never spent a single minute of your online poker career pondering about odds, you’ve probably already heard about pot odds anyway. Pot odds represent the proportionality between the amount of money you have to risk and the amount of money you stand to win in exchange.

If there are five dollars in the pot for instance, and you need to make a one dollar call to give yourself a chance to win that money, your pot odds are 5-1(rather favorable indeed). If you have to risk five dollars to win five dollars however, your pot calls will be much less favorable (1-1).

The first step in assessing the mathematically correct move in a poker hand is the calculation of your pot odds. Of course, it will not always be as simple as the above described example. You may have to call three dollars into a nine dollar pot. In such cases always divide both sides of the ratio with the amount of money that you have to call (in this case 3). That way, a 9 to 3 ratio will give you a 3 to 1 ratio.

Once you have that (using the above described method) you can move on to step two: assessing your hand equity. This part is a little more complicated than the pot odds part, but it's still nothing to be intimidated by either. The first thing is to find out your number of outs.

Suppose you have a 4-card flush on the flop. Because there are exactly 13 cards of the same suit, four of which are already revealed (either in your possession or on the board), there will be nine cards left that will fill your flush. Of the total of 52 cards in the deck, you already see five. What that means is that out of 52-5=47 cards, 9 will fill your flush. Also, there are 47-9=38 cards that will not fill your hand. Those odds represent a 38-9 ratio against your flush. That’s 4.22-1.

The third step in your mathematical decision process is to compare your pot odds with your equity. Suppose your pot odds reflect the 5-1 situation detailed above. In that case, your 5-1 pot odds are better than your 4.22-1 odds against making your hand, which means you should make the call. This is exactly the reason why – at the end of large scale MTTs, when the blinds skyrocket – it makes sense to shove all-in on just about any hand: the blinds alone give you pot odds so great that they justify pretty much any move you make.

Again: winning poker is about much more than the odds associated with various situations. It’s about skillful table selection, about discussing various strategies on poker forums, about securing good rakeback and poker prop deals, about getting the rights reads on your opponents and zounds of other more or less significant things you need to master in order to be successful