Introduction

Whenever you watch poker on television or play poker online, something that you are going to encounter all the time is the win percentage statistic. When you take a look at the percentages that are under each hand, it is pretty easy to actually confuse what those percentages mean. Since pot odds are an important aspect of playing mathematical poker, win percentages being confused with probabilities can really ruin a mathematical poker strategy. For that reason, win percentages need to be looked at in more detail.

Win Percentages at a Glance

A win percentage is a Monte Carlo simulation. For anyone that is not familiar with a Monte Carlo simulation, it is important to understand that they do not just get used in poker. Whenever you take two outcomes and then run the simulations thousands or even millions of times to establish long run probabilities, you are doing a Monte Carlo simulation. Because this is what a Monte Carlo simulation is however, it necessitates running through the entire event multiple times. In the case of a poker hand, the event is the hand. Therefore, the win percentage is the number of times that a hand is expected to win against the current field if the hands are played all the way through with calls and checks 100 times. It may seem obvious to some, but the fact that they deal with the entire hand makes win percentages unsuitable to use with pot odds.

Win Percentages versus Pot Odds

Here is why win percentages are not suitable with pot odds. When you are considering pot odds, what you are doing is taking a look at the pot relative to the bet you need to call in order to see the next card. If the pot odds that you are looking at deal with the next card only, how can a long term win percentage be of any assistance to your whatsoever?  Instead, what you need to look at is the next card probability. This means that if you are on the flop and you get a flush draw, your odds are not 2:1 against to make your flush draw (the win percentage), but rather closer to 4:1 against (making the flush on the turn). As you can see, there is a huge difference between those two sets of odds and mistaking the next card probability for the win percentage can easily blow your stack to pieces over the course of an evening if you are trying to play proper mathematical poker.

Final Thoughts

Win percentages are useful in a number of ways, but use with pot odds is not one of them unless you are on the river and want to know exactly what chance you have of winning the hand. They are used in television and on the internet sometimes to make the play more interesting for those at home, but they should not be as big a part of your mathematical poker strategy as most beginners make them.