While many of us play backgammon for fun on a cold, wintry evening, there are those who play professionally and make their living from it. One of the essential tools of a professional player is a Backgammon odds calculator. This allows the player to calculate which is the best move to make based on the statistics that are visible on the board. Watching a professional backgammon weighing up the odds is akin to watching a chess grandmaster.

The backgammon odds calculator can be a complicated concept to those who play purely for fun, and how to interpret the odds and probabilities to gain the best advantage can take years to master. You can use a backgammon odds calculator to work out the chances of hitting a blot, entering from the bar or throwing the score you need with the dice. Thankfully, no odds calculator will tell you the chances of winning that as always is 50/50.

Holdem Hands

The odds calculator tool is the ultimate tool to boost your winnings, no doubt about it. The review that we have posted before allows you to choose a software application that gives you the exact winning odds that you have when playing a certain poker hand. What more could you want? Well, there might be a problem using this odds calculator when you visit a real casino. Obviously the problem is you can’t carry an electronic device inside a real casino. Honestly I’m not sure if that is allowed in case someone would try it, but since I haven’t seen anyone using laptops there is a good chance that type of activity is not allowed inside the game rooms. In these cases it all comes down to personal knowledge and experience. But you don’t have to invent the wheel if someone has done it before and can show you how to do it yourself. Using that principle we will try to show you how to recognize a good hand, whether you have from the start or the flop/turn/river helps you get a good combination of cards.
Rank of hands is the basic of the poker game. Its what decides if you’re a winner or not. Here is a descending order of them:
Royal Flush – five cards in a straight, all five of the same suit, Ace high
Straight Flush – five cards in a straight, all five of the same suit
Four of a Kind – four cards of the same rank
Full House – a group of three cards are of the same rank. The 4-th card is of the same rank as the 5-th, but different rank as the first group of three cards
Flush – all five cards of the same suit
Straight – all five cards are in a straight rank order (one rank right after another). Ace can also be low (before 2)
Three of a kind – three of the cards are of the same rank
Two pairs – a group of two cards are of the same rank. A 3-rd card is of the same rank with a 4-th card, but different rank from the first group of two cards.
One pair – two cards are of the same rank
High Card – this applies when you don’t have of the combinations posted above. In this case your highest card determines your hand ( “king high”)

Statistics say there are about 20 starting hands that give you 17-18% chances to win that round considering a 10 players table. The less players at the table the greater the chances you have to win. The chances to get a pair as starting cards are about 7% and about 25% to get suited cards.
There is a top starting hand that we will provide for you:
1.The best possible hand is Ace-Ace, also called American Airlines. It seems this hand is winning more than any other combination.
2.King-King seems to be also a good winner, though dominated by the Aces.
3.Queen-Queen is the 3-rd best combination you can get at the start of a game.
4.Ace-King is among the best hands you can receive when starting the game, especially if the cards are suited.
5.Jack-Jack is also in the first half of the top 10 holdem hands winning around 1 out of 5 times played. The second half of the table looks like this:
6.Ace-Queen (suited is better)
7.King-Queen (also suited is better)
8.Ace-Jack (suited is better again)
9.King-Jack (suited)
10.Ace-ten (suited of course)

And if talked about the best possible hands you can get at the start of a game I now want to mention the worst possible cards you can get. There are a few different visions about “bad hands”, but the main ideea is you could flop if your first hand is a 2-7 for example. The ideea is you cant get a straight since you need 4 other cards in order to link the 2 with the 7. Just in case they are suited and a flush comes in, the chances that some other player has a higher flush are immense. You can still get pairs out of this combination but those pairs would also be so small that your chances wont be much better than they were at the start of that certain hand. Based on the same ideea the 2-8, 2-9, 3-8, 3-9 combinations are also hard to become winners, so think twice before staying in the game with such cards.

As I always said, these are statistic facts, things can happen different from the way things are seen by the odds calculators or any other kind of experts. Almost in every situation there is at least one card that can turn the odds around. So play safe and most important, have fun!

Free Poker Odds Calculator

Playing online poker can sometimes be tricky, and I mean there are several aspects of the game that some people can control better than others. An example of what poker players can do is using some additional software that can raise a player’s chances to win a hand, software usually called poker odds calculator. But winning is something hard to control so it would be better said that certain software can help a player win more on a good hand and loose less on a poor hand, things far more important than just winning, as experts say. Generally speaking, to do that you need to know or at least to have an idea of what your chances are against the other players at a certain point of the game, before you make a move – you can raise, call, check or even fold. I have made some research and I’m going to post the list of some of the free poker odds calculator providers. Remember, you can use the applications simultaneously with the games at you favorite poker table.

Poker Rewards offers you a poker odds calculator and it is all free. Download the file called PokerCalcSetup.exe that will install the very useful tool on your PC. Once you start the application it will try to reach a certain server, which will fail if you don’t play on that particular server. Just click OK on all three messages that will pop-up on your screen and the application will start the offline version. Once it is started you have to first choose the number of the players sitting at the table. Then choose the two cards that have been dealt to you in the beginning of that certain round. As the mage goes on you just have to choose the cards that come into play. The application has an interesting advice bar on the top of the window that prompts messages as advices for your upcoming action. All the time during the game you should watch the right side of the window that shows your chances of winning the hand. Also you have the information showing you what is the best hand that the others players can get at a certain time.

Holdem Indicator is another offline application, which of course can also be used online for a certain table. The first thing you have to do after you download and start the application is to double click the first card of the two dealt cards. A new window will pop-up containing the number of players which you can change with a simple click and than you can easily choose a card, the correspondent to the one you have in your game. Select the second card, then the flop, turn and the river. As the game advances the application will show you the theoretical chances you have to beat your opponents. Additionally you can see what chances you have to get a certain hand along the game. Another interesting feature of the application is that you can check you opponent’s stats, such as how aggressive he is at a certain point of the game (before/after the flop, before/after the turn or the river).

The two options above are software that you can download and install on any pc you wish and of course you can use it even when you’re not connected to the internet. Next I’m going to give you 2 online versions of poker odds calculator.

Poker calculator online is the site that offers you quite the same statistics I have explained above. Click on any of the cards faced down to select your place at the table, then start clicking on the cards shown in the lower area of the table window to select the cards that have been dealt to you. After you choose the two cards in your hand you will be asked to select the flop, then the turn and the river. The first statistics of you chances to win a particular hand will be shown in the right side of the window, but only if you click the “Calculate odds” button in the upper area of the window.

Poker News has a better interface of the same poker odds calculator, at least that’s my opinion. One of the things that make it easier is that the statistics are shown automatically, you don’t have to use any “Calculate Odds” button. Another interesting thing is that you have the option to mark your opponents as “Folded” along the game. This will provide you more accurate statistics on your chances to win. And for the anticipation part, after each step of the game the remaining cards in the deck are colored in green if that certain card will help you, or colored in red if that card helps your opponent. The rest of this poker odds calculator is pretty much the same with all the above. In the simulated game of which I’ve took a screenshot you can see that I have 97.73 % chances to win, but there is still one card left that can turn the game around and make me a 4 of a kind aces looser.

Keep in mind at all times that the poker odds calculator is using mathematical statistics and can sometimes fail since a quite big amount of luck is involved in the game of poker. But for the long run it is certain that these odds calculators can help you increase your earning by 25-30% at least, as experts say. I hope this review will help you find your way to a successful career in the poker world. And above all, have fun!