Calculating pot odds, outs and other percentages can really boring. Most people who play online poker are able to calculate their math roughly but never exactly. In other words, they find it difficult to calculate statistics 100% accurately. Point is, can you blame them?

No, all humans only have their brains to use and brains are simply not as fast, accurate and smart as computers, especially not when it comes to mathematics.

Humans are messy, they don’t pay 100% attention and they are mostly lazy. It hasn’t always been like that, but in the modern era, where so much is done and resolved by computers, it looks like human beings are just used to the idea of computers doing the work for them in lot’s of situations. It’s a fact. Ask yourself the simple question: could you live without your computer or your cell phone? Most people tend to say no, and the ones who say yes haven’t truly experienced it or given it real thought.

So, this being said, it is time to pinpoint this general concept of computers and humans onto the online poker world. We all agree that computing pot odds, outs and other percentages is an important element of the poker game: the ones who play mathematically correct make less mistakes than the ones who don’t. And since poker is, in plain words, a decision making game, the ones who compute their odds will win in the end whilst the ones who do not compute their odds will loss on the long term.

Now, we have just addressed the weakness of the human brain in terms of (lack of) capacity, interference of emotions and (lack of) speed. We have also addressed computers in terms of their enormous capacity, the inexistence of emotions and their lightning speed. Right now it is time to apply this analysis of differences onto the human online poker player and his brains versus the online poker player and his poker odds calculator.

The former computes his odds with some accuracy, knowledge and speed but as he plays multiple tables at the same time, as he sometimes get bored or caught up in an important all or as he faces a bad beat this decreases the speed, accuracy and capacity of his brains: he makes mistakes by not computing the odds, outs and probabilities 100% correctly.

The latter has just attached his poker calculator to all his tables and just follows the computers advice. The pot odds tool takes in account all odds, probabilities, statistics, table statistics and the current hand development and mesmerizes this clearly visible percentages presenting the player just what he needs and it even gives the player instant hand advice based on all the calculations. Now the latter player only has to take in account these presented statistics and the advice so he is able to make a better decision, not just in this hand, but in all hands to come.

I hope that I have made it clear that playing with poker tools and pot odds calculators not only gives you more accurate statistics and calculations, but also saves you time to watch your opponent and make correct decisions. I advice it to all my students to play with pot odds tools and they all are winners because of it.

Joris Dekkers is a internet no limit holdem expert. He is the president of www.dominateonlinepoker.com and author of the Dominate Online Poker E-Book and is known for the best listing of Poker Tools and Poker Calculators.

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