Do You Really Need A Calculator?

I’ve been playing online poker for around five years with a poker odds calculator. I remember my very first online poker game like it was yesterday. I was moving along nicely, having won four out of nine hands. So now the tenth hand of the game. I get dealt 10/8 pocket cards, on the flop I hit with 7,9,J. Of course I figured the hand belonged to me, so I proceeded to bet like I was guaranteed to win the pot. Now for the turn card, a king, now my mind is racing, trying to calculate the odds of someone having a hand that could beat my straight 7, 8, 9, 10, J. What would be the odds, could another player at the table been dealt a queen and ten pocket cards? That would give them a straight 9,10,J,Q,K? Turns out they didn’t have Q/10, they had A/Q and a ten gets dealt on the river, which gives the player A,K,Q,J,10. I remember thinking to myself what were the odds of that happening? It was my first bad beat. Welcome to the bad beat club!

At the time, I didn’t know much about poker odd calculators. I heard a few things about them, but I was skeptical as to whether or not they were all they claimed to be. I mean really, come on now, can poker odd calculators seriously improve my chances of winning an online poker game? I decided to take a closer look at poker odds calculators. I started browsing different websites offering poker odds calculators.

The ability to calculate odds is a natural talent. Just as a basketball player has a natural talent for shooting, a poker player has a natural talent for calculating odds “on-call.” This natural talent can be sharpened, but only by practicing. Playing hands and learning by experience. The bottom line is while poker odds calculators might be what they claim to be, there are still things that a calculator simply cannot teach online poker players.