The Power of Fold Equity

The Power of Fold Equity

The longer that I play poker, the more that I realize that the thing that separates many players in today’s games is the understanding of certain poker concepts. A lot of times, players throw around terms such as “priced in to call”, “blockers” and “implied odds” (to name a few) without fully understanding the use and meaning of the term.

  Today we are going to discuss a very important poker term, Fold Equity. Fold Equity accounts for the times that you win a pot because the other player in the hand folds and you don’t have to show your cards. At that point, your cards are irrelevant because you already won the pot. You could be holding 2 napkins as they say…or a Joker and an Old Maid card. It doesn’t matter. Before you think, “Oh this sounds easy. All I need to do is keep bluffing with nothing every time and get the other players to fold.” It’s not quite so simple. Many of today’s players are sticky, meaning they don’t want to fold. As is always the case in poker, rule #1 is “know your player”. What works against one player won’t necessarily work against another player.

Back to the concept of Fold Equity. Let’s take a simple hypothetical example. Let’s say you are holding 2 black 7s and the only other opponent in the hand is holding 2 red 7s before the flop. Obviously, pre flop without seeing any other cards that have been discarded, you are each 50% to win the hand. That is if you both see all the cards dealt out to the end. If one of you folds before the end, the other person wins the pot. 

Let’s say that for this example this is a cash game and you each have $100 in front of you and there is another $100 already in the pot. Let’s say if you shove all in that your opponent calls you 50% of the time and folds the other 50% of the time. How has this affected the numbers? Well 50% of the time you win half of the time (50% of 50% which is 25%) when the opponent calls and the other 50% of the time you win all of the time (100% of 50% which is 50%). That last 50% of the time you won because the other player folded.  More importantly, let’s do the math, 25% of the time you are winning $200, 25% of the time you are losing $100 and 50% of the time you are winning $100. $50-$25+$50=a net of +$75! 

 I know that this is a simple example to make the point and very few times will there be an example this simple, but it helps to understand how powerful it is to get someone to fold. You are never going to know your players EXACT cards and how they will act but using this leverage in the right spots will help to make your poker bankroll grow!

Frank L. DiRe
Nerdthusiast Poker Content Writer
@FLD15 on Twitter