In no limit hold’em on your custom poker table, many situations come down to math. That is, if your odds of winning are better than the odds the pot is offering you, it is correct to put chips in the pot. This situation often occurs when you are deciding whether to call a bet. However, it can also come into play when thinking about making a bet. In these cases, fold equity often figures into the equation.

What Is Fold Equity?

Fold equity is value you get in the pot from the possibility of your opponent folding. In the purest sense, you may think of fold equity as your success value when you try to bluff.

For example: You are playing at Poker Stars and there is $110 in the pot; you bet $100 with nothing, your bluff only has to be successful half the time for the bluff to be correct. One time you will be called and lose $100 and the next time your opponent will fold and you will win $110. The amount of time your opponent will fold as a percentage of the pot represents your fold equity.

Fold Equity in Practice

Let’s say you hold Ah 9h at Full Tilt Poker and the board is Tc Kh 6h 3s. There is $400 in the pot. You are up against a tight opponent who you are almost certain has AK, meaning you can only win if a heart comes. The odds of a heart coming are about 4-to-1, so if you check and your opponent bets more than $100, it will be correct to fold. However, what if you bet as a semi-bluff?

Let’s say you bet $300. When your opponent calls, you will win one time and lose four times. You have 20 percent equity in the $700 available to win, which means your $300 bet is worth $140, which is not very good.

However, you know that this opponent is good enough to lay down top pair top kicker to a big bet, and you estimate that 75 percent of the time he will in fact, fold. This means that three quarters of the time your $300 bet is worth the $400 in the pot. The other 25 percent of the time it is worth $140.

75 percent of $400 is $300 and 25 percent of $140 is $35. Add these together and you get a value for your $300 bet of $335, which means with the fold equity (75 percent), your bet is correct.

Things to Remember

75 percent is a rather large amount of fold equity to credit your opponent with, and in most cases, it will be much lower. However, if you have a marginal situation, fold equity can help you decide whether to make a move on the pot or wait for a better opportunity at the next poker table game.

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