Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
For example, if you saw a flop of: QcTd6h
For example, if you saw a flop of: QcTd6h which had $100 already in the pot, and you held AsKh and your opponent had KK, and then went all-in and you called, you'd have ~28% equity in the pot. ~28% of the time on average you could expect to win this pot. Whether this was a good play to call or not would depend on our equity, in conjunction with our expected value.
Expected Value (EV)
Expected Value (EV) Expected value is the average money won or lost based on your equity and odds of the call or raise you are making. Using the above example, if our opponent bet $60 on the flop, and we called, we'd use the current equity we have in the pot to determine our expected value. In this case 28% of the time we win $160, and 72% of the time we lose $60.