Pot odds count the chips already there. Implied odds count what an opponent will pay you when you hit, and they are the justification for calls that pot odds alone do not support.
They are real and routinely overestimated. A gutshot getting 16% equity against a 33% requirement needs to win several times the current bet on later streets to break even, from an opponent holding a hand strong enough to pay it, on a card that does not obviously complete your draw. All three conditions have to hold.
Reverse implied odds are the mirror and are ignored more often: the money you will lose when you hit your hand and it is still second best. Drawing to a low flush against an opponent representing strength is the standard example.
Where the numbers come from
Related terms in poker
- Pot odds — The price a call is getting, compared against how often it needs to win.
- Outs — The cards remaining that would improve your hand to a likely winner.
- Equity — Your share of the pot, meaning how often you win it if the hand plays to showdown.
- Position — Where you act in the betting order, and the largest structural edge in poker.
- Button — The dealer position, which acts last on every postflop street.
- Cutoff — The seat immediately to the right of the button.
Where an entry quotes a number, that figure comes from the computed sections of this site rather than from another glossary, so the definition and the derivation cannot drift apart. Each entry links to the page where the number is worked out.