Tag: paul phua poker

In a single year, poker prodigy Dan Colman won $22.4 million in live tournaments and four major titles – aged just 23. He rarely gives interviews, so Paul Phua is delighted to introduce this latest video

The latest video interview for the Paul Phua Poker School is with Daniel Colman, who has one of the most extraordinary rise-to-riches stories in all of poker. He was talent-spotted as a teenager by poker pro Olivier Busquet, after Colman kept calling out his hands while watching him play online. In 2013, Dan Colman became the first online hyper-turbo player to win more than $1 million in a year – what’s more, he managed it in just nine months.


“I don’t see poker as being a sustainable source of income a few years down the road,” Dan said modestly in an interview at the time. It must be one of the only times in his poker career that Dan has been very, very wrong!
The very next year, Dan Colman won the $1m-entry Big One for One Drop tournament, besting Daniel Negreanu heads-up at the end, to win $15.3 million and his first WSOP bracelet. He was just 22 years old.
As if to prove this was no fluke, that year Dan Colman also won the EPT Super High Roller in Monte Carlo for $1.5m; the Seminole Hard Rock Poker Open Main Event for $1.4m (beating 1,500 players); and the WPT Alpha8 Main Event in London for $950,000; as well as making numerous other final tables. He was named Player of the Year 2014 by Bluff, Card Player and All In magazines.

Drawn to the dark side

Unusually for a player so thrust into the limelight, Dan Colman turned down pretty much every interview request (which makes me extra-excited he agreed to do video interviews with the Paul Phua Poker School). He posted a very thoughtful explanation for this online. He said that though he loves playing poker, he doesn’t like the fact that for him to win, someone else must lose a large sum of money.
“I am conflicted,” he wrote. “I capitalise off this game that targets people’s weaknesses. I do enjoy it, I love the strategy part of it, but I do see it as a very dark game.”
He still loves to play. “It is a beautiful game when you think about it,” he says in this new video interview with the Paul Phua Poker School. “Just everything matches up perfectly where there are straights, flushes, what beats what.”
But he also still cautions players to be careful with their money. In my previous video interview with Dan Colman, he warned of the dangers of online poker for recreational players. And in this new video profile, he admits that he himself lost money for his first five years of playing – which may give hope to anyone still struggling to master the game!
“I had poor poker bankroll management,” he admits in the interview, and he went boom-and-bust several times before hitting his stride. [Discover my tips on bankroll management here.]

A DIY style of poker

The other interesting thing about Dan Colman is that he is mostly self-taught – with a helping hand from mentors such as Oliver Busquet. Phil Ivey recently said in our video interview that players nowadays have it easier: he learned by trial and error because there was less advice out there on strategy than there is now. Dan went down the same route, but in his case by choice rather than from necessity.
Even now, as Dan says in our video interview, “I’m definitely a field player. I don’t use much math, game theory. I’m very intuitive but, that being said, the guys that are very math based, game theory orientated, I always want to pay attention to what they are doing and try and understand the reasoning behind it.”
Whatever Dan Colman is doing, it’s working. He’s made another $2m-plus in live tournament earnings just this year alone. He’s also one of the nicest, brightest and most articulate people one could meet.
And he is still only 26 years old!
More videos from the poker pros will be going live weekly on the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss out. It’s free!

The latest Paul Phua Poker School video interview is with French poker pro Rui Cao. Paul Phua explores the lessons to be learned

Rui Cao, the subject of this new video profile for the Paul Phua Poker School, is recognised as one of the best poker players in France. I first played against him six years ago, when he came to Macau to play in the high-stakes cash game known in poker circles as “the Big Game”. Rui Cao is an aggressive, risk-taking player, and he loved the excitement of these huge pots. Anyone who can thrive in such a high-pressure situation, where even the most experienced players can be at risk of losing their bankroll, deserves respect.


In his previous video interview for the Paul Phua Poker School, discussing aggression in poker with myself and Wai Kin Yong, Rui Cao admitted that he sometimes plays a little too loose: “It’s an ego problem,” he said. So this time we asked him what he considers the most important attributes for success in poker.
“I think being smart is a good point,” Rui Cao says in the new video interview, “and being able to learn fast is similar, to adjust fast to the game. Other than that, some human factors as well like discipline, patience, the ability to control ourselves, I think mostly.”

How not to go on tilt

I very much agree with him on this last point. In fact, I wrote a blog about this a few months ago. Even if you have total mastery of poker strategy and poker odds, you will still be a losing player if you don’t have the patience and discipline to apply the theory in practice. What is the point of knowing the best starting hands, for instance, if you get bored of folding and start to play everything you are dealt?
Part of not going “on tilt” is developing a philosophical attitude to the game. Yes, you got unlucky this time. But the longer you play, the more luck evens out. You get unlucky sometimes, you get lucky sometimes. If you make the right decisions, over time you will be a winner. So don’t let temporary setbacks affect you.
When asked in this interview how he deals with losing, Rui Cao says, “Quite OK. I just sleep for 15 hours and try to forget!” The swings in poker, he says, “are just part of the game”. The one thing you can do, he adds, is to examine whether any of the hands you lost were the result of bad play rather than bad luck. “I try to improve my game and losing is part of the game, I would say.”

An epic struggle with Isildur1

Rui Cao originally made his name playing Omaha, which can have even greater swings than Texas Hold ’Em. Asked which of his many matches was the most memorable, he recalls one marathon PLO session against Viktor Blom, better known under his online name “Isildur1” as one of the most skilled, aggressive and feared online players of all.
“We were four-tabling,” Rui Cao recalls in the video interview, “and maybe at one point I was down 30 buy-ins or something, and two hours later I was up like 30 buy-ins, and it was a pretty crazy upswing. We were, like, playing crazy, and it was a really, really fun session to play in.”
I like the way Rui Cao considers this game his favourite not because he bested one of the world’s top players, or because he made a lot of money, but because it was “really, really fun”! We poker players talk a lot about strategy, and discipline, and improving our game. Of course that’s important; in fact, it’s fundamental to the Paul Phua Poker School. Without it, we would lose money. And if we lose too much money, we can no longer play.
But let us not lose sight of the reason we all took up poker in the first place: it’s just a really, really fun game to play!
More videos from the poker pros will be going live weekly on the Paul Phua Poker YouTube channel. Subscribe if you don’t want to miss out. It’s free!

What is “short-deck” poker? This is just one of the things Paul Phua discusses with Phil Ivey in the latest Paul Phua Poker School video, along with strategy tips for beginners

Do beginners have an easier time at poker these days? In the latest Paul Phua Poker School video, we welcome back the great Phil Ivey. Last time we talked about the thrills and challenges poker holds, even for a player as experienced as Phil. This time we focus on beginners to the game, as well as a fun variant on Texas Hold ’Em called “short-deck poker” or “Six Plus Hold ’Em”.


Poker can be a hard game to break into: experienced players may punish you if they sense weakness, and though it is easy to learn the basic rules, it can take a while to understand all the odds and strategies. But as Phil Ivey says in this video interview, “Because of all the information that’s available, with the different teaching schools and things that are available now, different ways of learning that are out there, and with Paul’s teaching site, I think everyone is catching up.”
When Phil Ivey started out in poker, winning his first WSOP bracelet when he was just 23, internet poker was in its infancy. There were a few strategy books, such as Doyle Brunson’s Super System, but not the virtual library of tips that is out there now.
“I didn’t have schools,” says Phil Ivey in the video interview. “I didn’t have teaching sites. I didn’t have different tools I could learn from.” His most important lessons, he says, came just from trial and error.

A big tip for beginners

So one big tip for beginners is to learn everything they can from sites like Paul Phua Poker! And always be aware that however much you think you know, there is always more to learn. As Phil Ivey points out in our video interview, “beginners have a certain selection of hands in their minds that they want to play, and they just stick with that”.
Instead, he encourages players to experiment: “Start learning which hands you can play, in which positions, which hands you can bluff with, which hands you should call with.”
And as I say in the video, your play should also vary according to the structure of the games – whether there are antes or straddles involved, for instance – as well as whether the other players are aggressive or tight.
If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is! Phil Ivey has devoted two decades to perfecting his game. I know Phil pretty well, as we have played together many, many times. And, as I also say in the video, I think one of the most impressive things about him is not just his grasp of strategy, but his strength of character. He just never seems to go on tilt, and that’s something I try to model myself on.

“Short-deck” or “Six-Plus Hold ’Em”

There are more useful tips in the video, so do watch it. But one thing I perhaps need to explain more is the “short deck game” that we talk about in the interview. We often like to play this game when we get together. It is very similar to Texas Hold ’Em, but with fewer cards.
Before you start you remove from the deck all the low cards, deuce through to 5, which is why the game is also known as “Six Plus Hold ’Em”. It’s a more exciting game than Texas Hold ’Em in many ways, because with the low cards taken out you are more often dealt high cards and big pairs. You also have to adapt to a different set of odds. Post-flop, you have a nearly 1 in 2 chance of completing an open-ended straight draw by the river, for instance, compared with nearly 1 in 3 in classic Texas Hold ’Em.
As Phil Ivey says in the video interview, “There’s a lot of gambling involved. The equities run pretty close, so it’s pretty easy to get your money in the middle and be 50/50 or somewhere near that. It suits a more gambling style of player.”
Phil thinks this makes the short-deck game perfect for the beginner. But if so, I have just one piece of advice. You still don’t want to be playing against Phil Ivey!
For more Paul Phua Poker School videos, subscribe to the YouTube channel. It’s free!

Slow rolling, splashing the pot, string betting – these are some common mistakes to avoid in live poker, says Paul Phua

I have always preferred playing live, and more and more online players are making the transition. In the recent Paul Phua Poker School video interview with Dan Colman, we discussed some of the problems they face in terms of tells. But there is also a set of rituals and etiquette associated with live play that online players and poker novices need to be aware of. Not only does getting them wrong annoy the other players, it marks you out as a novice – easy prey!

  1. Don’t hit and run

In a cash game, you can leave whenever you want. In theory! In practice, if you do so straight after winning a very big pot, especially with a lucky hand, the other players will complain that it’s a “hit and run”. You should wait for at least an orbit.

  1. Don’t hold up the game

By all means think for a while before calling a big bet. But if you take ages over every small decision, it can be frustrating for the other players. In poker, time is money! Even worse is if you have your face buried in a laptop or mobile phone screen, and have to be prompted by the dealer every time it’s your turn to bet.

  1. Don’t go “bum-hunting”

In live cash games, you can ask to be moved away from a table where you feel you are at a disadvantage compared with other players. Equally, you can ask to be moved to a table where there are some easy “fish”. If you do that too blatantly or often, however, you may be accused of “bum-hunting”. A couple of years ago 35 pros were banned from the high-stakes poker room at the Palm Beach casino in London for poor etiquette including bum-hunting.

  1. Have a massage, eat some food – just maybe not at the same time

Long sessions can be tiring. That’s why most poker rooms offer massages while you’re sitting at the table. You can also order food at your seat, so you don’t miss any action with a meal break. That said, Victoria Coren Mitchell recently Tweeted her surprise when she saw this: “A poker player on another table is eating and having a massage at the same time. I’m tempted to hand him some nose clippers and a crossword.”

  1. Don’t talk about the hand in a multi-way pot

House rules vary on this. Some casinos apply this rule strictly; others turn a blind eye. Just be aware that you may be asked by the dealer to refrain from talking about the hand being played unless you are heads up. And it’s always wrong to do so when you yourself are not in the hand.

  1. Don’t forget to tip

It’s customary to tip the dealer when you win a good pot, and to tip the serving staff when they bring you food or drink. Exactly how much depends on how generous you are feeling and what country you are in. Watch what the regulars are doing, and follow suit.

  1. Don’t tap on the glass

When a player suffers a bad beat, they will often chastise the winner for their poor play in calling when behind. Instead, you should smile, congratulate them, and generally do everything you can to keep this “fish” happy for long enough to lose the money back again. And why do poker players say “Don’t tap on the glass?” Because, in an aquarium, tapping on the glass frightens away the fish!

  1. Beware of string bets

Different casinos in different countries all have slightly different rules. For instance, counting out the chips for your bet one by one when over the betting line is fine in most of America, but in England it’s called a “string bet” and only your first chip will count. Or a novice may throw one large chip into the middle, thinking it’s a raise, unaware that in live play any single chip counts as a call. If you’re not sure of the house rules, simply announce your raise before making it.

  1. Don’t splash the pot

When you bet, keep the chips directly in front of you. If you throw them into the middle, so that some of them “splash” the pot, it makes it hard for the dealer to work out how much you bet.

  1. Act in turn

Always wait for the action to come round to you before folding. In fact, don’t even hold your cards in an obvious folding position. This is because it helps players to know that players in late position are intending to fold, thus disadvantaging anyone who has previously acted.

  1. Be graceful when losing or winning

When you lose, don’t slam the table, swear or throw the cards at the dealer. It’s bad tactics as well as bad manners, since it tells other players you may be on tilt for the next few hands. And when you win a big pot, remember that means another player has just lost: celebrating loudly is like partying at someone else’s funeral.

  1. And above all, don’t slow roll

“Slow rolling” is when a player whose bet is called pretends at first to be caught in a bluff, and only belatedly reveals the winning hand. This may seem funny in a home game when teasing a friend, but in a casino game the whole table will line up to kick you!

The Paul Phua Poker School chart of common poker odds will dramatically improve your game. Paul Phua gives tips on how they should affect your strategy

In my last three articles in this mini-series on poker odds, I explained why they matter; how you can calculate them with a simple magic formula; and how to apply the odds in your play using a nut flush draw as an example.
But in the heat of the moment, you may not have time to calculate the odds, even using the magic formula. So be sure to learn this list of the most useful poker odds. I promise it will revolutionise your game.
I have added playing tips to each one, to show how knowing the odds can improve your strategy.

Odds of getting these cards dealt pre-flop

Pocket Aces: 1 in 220

If you are so tight that you will only play with Aces, you will have a long wait! You’ll be dealt pocket Aces – or Kings, or Queens, or any specific pair – just 1 in 220 hands. That’s no more than once a day in live play. You’ll get AK, however, once in every 82 hands.

Pocket pair: 1 in 17

It’s rare to be dealt a pocket pair, so don’t waste them. A large pocket pair (QQ, KK, AA, plus JJ or 10-10 depending on previous bets and your position) should raise or re-raise pre-flop, then bet the flop unless an overcard hits. A smaller pocket pair should usually “set mine”, ie call if it’s cheap, and hope for a set on the flop.

Two suited cards: 1 in 4

Suited cards look pretty, but can quickly drain your chips. It’s best to play them only when they are high cards in their own right, or when they are connected to give you an additional chance of a straight draw. Relax: now you know you are dealt them every four hands, you can afford to wait for better ones.

Odds of hitting the flop

A pair: 1 in 3

If you hold unpaired cards pre-flop, your chance of making a pair on the flop is just 1 in 3. The good news is that any single opponent is also unlikely to have hit.

A set from a pocket pair: 1 in 8

If you are dealt a pocket pair, your chance of hitting a set on the flop is about 1 in 8. Even so, it’s often worth “set mining” even with a low pair, as you can often win much more than 8x your investment if you do hit a set.

Odds from flop to river

Flush draw: 1 in 3

If you have a flush draw on the flop, your chance of completing it by the river is slightly higher than 1 in 3. If you can only double your money, eg you’re against just one other player, it usually doesn’t make sense to keep calling and chasing the draw.

Flush draw plus another draw: 1 in 2

As explained here, a flush draw with an overcard such as an Ace, or an inside straight draw, is a much stronger hand. Be alert to the extra outs that make flush draws much more profitable.

“Open-ended” straight draw: 1 in 3

An “open-ended” straight draw is where you hold four consecutive cards, so a card at either end would complete the straight. This gives you 8 outs: slightly worse odds than a flush draw. Beware too of someone else drawing to a flush. You then have only 6 outs, as two of your cards would also complete their flush.
“Gutshot” straight draw: 1 in 6
An inside straight draw, nicknamed a “gutshot” or “belly buster”, is where only one middle card will complete your straight – eg you have 5689 and need the 7. This is a huge leak for inexperienced players: you almost never have the correct pot odds to call with this hand. Look out for the “double belly buster”, where two middle cards could make you a straight, eg you have 467810 and need the 5 or the 9. This is nearly 1 in 3.

A full house from a set: 1 in 3

If you’re unlucky enough to flop a set against a straight or flush, you’re still in better shape than you might think. Your chance of getting a full house with the final two cards is 1 in 3. Your chance of two pairs becoming a house are, however, just 1 in 6.

All-in pre-flop: who wins by the river?

In the late stages of a tournament, short stacks are often forced to shove all-in with less than premium hands, and are then called by a player with high cards. As the following set of odds shows, there is always hope for the underdog (these odds will change slightly in different circumstances, eg if cards are suited or have straight draw potential):
Pocket pair v overcards, eg 55 v AK: 54%
Highest card v next two best, eg A6 v K7: 60%
Highest card v second highest, eg A9 v K8: 65%
Both cards higher, eg A9 v 72: 68%
“Dominating” your opponent by duplicating their kicker, eg A7 v K7: 74%
Higher pair against lower pair, eg KK v 88: 81%

In the latest in a series of video interviews with the Paul Phua Poker School, poker pro Dan Colman talks to Paul Phua about AI, tells, and the trouble with online poker

In the latest in the Paul Phua Poker School videos featuring top pros, I am delighted to have Daniel Colman sharing his frank views on poker. Dan is an exceptional player. He made headlines when he won the 2014 Big One for One Drop for a $15m payday, but it was no accident: he had already won $2m in the Monte Carlo Super High Roller Grand Final that year, and he has won many more since. With earnings of $28m in all, he is the second most successful live tournament player in the world.


But enough about money! The point I am making is that Dan knows his poker. And what is even more remarkable is that he began as an online player, in his teens.
All this makes him the perfect person to ask about the difference between online and live play. Dan Colman is not afraid to speak his mind: “I think the way the online poker game works,” he says in the video interview with me, “is that it puts recreational players at a severe disadvantage.”
The problem is, he says, that professional players are equipped with all kinds of software and online trackers: “They mine hands from the days and weeks before to get a database on players they’ve never even played with to understand how they play.”
I agree with Dan. I have always preferred to play live. It’s more sociable, more fun than staring at a screen. And, as well, there is more psychology involved. You get a feel for how your opponents play. You may even get a read on them, which tells you what cards they are holding.
There can be a big adjustment for online players looking to move into live games. “When you go from the online realm and cross over to live poker,” says Dan Colman in the video interview, “you’re always uncomfortable at first. [Young players] might know ‘I have to bluff right here’, but then they think about it and they think ‘Oh, maybe they’re on to me, I check’. You have to get confidence to be able to follow through with your game plan in live poker.”
Here is a funny story, which I also talk about in the video interview. I have played for many years in what poker players call The Big Game, which is a cash game at extremely high stakes. Some of the world’s top poker players would fly into Macau, or Manila, and play for huge pots in this Big Game. One of them was Dan “Jungleman” Cates.
I can say this because now he has successfully plugged that leak in his game, but as a very experienced and skilled online player moving to live games, Jungleman had tons of “tells”! We so often knew exactly what his cards were, and when he was bluffing!
Finally, there is one other aspect of online play that both I and Dan Colman are concerned about, and which we discuss in the video. AI programs are now beating even the world’s best players. I have written about this before. How will that affect online poker?
This is what Dan Colman has to say in the video interview: “I think online poker will die down as a result of computers and machines playing. I think this will come in the next one, two, three years.”
So, all you online players, if you don’t want to bow down to our AI overlords, maybe you should try a little more live poker! Play some home games with your friends. Visit a casino that offers cash games. Enter some live tournaments. Who knows? You may well find it makes poker more fun.

In the third part of the Paul Phua Poker School series on poker odds, Paul Phua gives tips on predicting the future to improve your present strategy

Would it not be wonderful to have the power to predict the future? It would certainly be easy to make money at betting! Film-lovers will recall how using a sports almanac from the future made Biff Tannen a rich man in the second Back to the Future film.
We can’t all have a DeLorean time machine, but in poker we have the next best thing. We have the ability to predict what is likely to happen in the future, and to change our strategy accordingly.
In the first two parts in this mini-series on poker odds, I gave tips on why odds are important, and how to calculate them using a simple magic formula. We have seen already how knowing our likelihood of winning will affect how much we bet. Now here is an interesting application in practical play:

How to play a nut flush draw

As I said in my video on the best pre-flop hands, a suited Ace has great potential as a starting hand, even if your kicker is low. An Ace on the flop often gives you the best hand, though be prepared to fold to opposition if your kicker is weak. And if you flop a flush draw, you are in a very powerful position – more powerful than many people realise.
Let’s take the starting hand shown in my video: A4 of diamonds. The flop comes K5 of diamonds, with a 9 of spades. Another player bets. First, do what you should always do when someone bets: work out what hand they are likely to hold.
There’s no strong straight draw out there; if he has a flush draw it’s worse than yours; sets are uncommon. You can’t put him on AK, as he didn’t seem that strong in pre-flop betting, so you reckon he has a K: maybe KQ or KJ. So he likely has top pair, and you have nothing – yet! But you have great potential. Let’s work out how much.

Count up your “outs”

There are nine diamonds left to come that complete our flush, plus three Aces to give us a higher pair: that’s 12 “outs”. Using our magic formula for calculating the odds, that gives us 12 x 4 = 48% chance of winning by the river. [Mathematicians say the real figure is 45% –the magic formula isn’t perfect, but it’s close enough.]
That’s a nearly 1 in 2 chance of winning the pot! Pretty good odds. But the great thing about poker is it’s not all cold, hard math. It takes strategy and psychology to decide how to play those odds.
Your instinct here will be to call, and hope to hit. That’s a reasonable strategy, and the more people who are in the hand, the better it is. You will likely take all their money if you hit your nut flush – thus being paid several times your investment.
But let’s look at another, more advanced strategy, one that is particularly valuable if only one other player is in the hand.

Re-raising for “fold equity”

Unless you are keen to keep a number of people in the pot, a great tactic against a single opponent is to re-raise rather than call. Re-raising gives you “fold equity”. That’s a fancy way of saying it gives you an extra chance at winning: if they get scared and fold, congratulations! You’ve won the pot with the worst hand. And if they call, you’re still a coin-flip to win by the river.
To have fold equity, your bet should be big enough to make them fold. Simply doubling their bet is almost never enough. Even a weak King is likely to call and hope you are semi-bluffing with a flush draw (which you are!), or that they hit two pair on the turn.
So how much do you raise? That calls for psychology: is this player a holder or a folder? Some people are “calling stations” who will call almost any bet with a pair. With a person like this, you may need to raise bigger. Either way, do it confidently. If you are relatively short-stacked, you can even shove all-in. Don’t worry! You are nearly 50-50 to win even if they call.

If they do call – what next?

Maybe they realise you’re on flush draw. Maybe they’re just stubborn. Whichever, your opponent calls you, and the turn card is a blank – it doesn’t help. What now?
Usually now you have no fold equity: if they called a re-raise on the flop, they will often feel committed to call a bet on the turn. And now you have only one card left to come, not two, so your chances of winning are halved to than 1 in 4.
Unless you are a very experienced player with a strong read that your opponent may fold, it’s not worth inflating the pot with what are now poor odds of winning. You want to check. The good news is, your opponent will be wary of you and will usually also check, so you get a “free” card to see the river.
To sum up: when you re-raise on the flop, you have maybe a coin-flip chance of them folding to give you a small pot; and a coin-flip chance of them calling, in which case you then have a coin-flip chance of winning a big pot. Three quarters of the time, therefore, you are winning with a re-raise!

Other flush draws

Let’s just look quickly at other flush draw combinations that you might not be aware of.
Two more outs: Let’s say there was a 4 on the flop rather than the 5, giving your A4 of diamonds a small pair. Now you have two additional outs (either of the two 4s still to come would give you three of a kind to beat his pair of Kings), so you are even better than 50%.
Three more outs: Or let’s say the flop came K52. Now with your A4 you additionally have an inside straight draw, giving three extra outs. (There are four 3s that would make a straight. One of these is a diamond and you’ve already counted that out in your flush draw, hence three extra outs not four).
Three fewer outs: The flush draw to beware of is where you have no extra outs, just the nine cards for your flush. The magic formula tells us that your chances then are just 9 x 4 = 36%, ie 1 in 3. It’s a big leak in less experienced players’ strategy to chase this kind of flush draw against a single opponent.

In my next article on poker odds and strategy…

I hope the above example shows how knowing the odds – our own probability time machine that lets us peer into future likely outcomes – helps dictate our present strategy. In my next article, I will give you a useful chart of the most common. Learn it well! Read the next article.

Hate maths? You’re in luck. Paul Phua reveals the magic formula poker players use to make calculating poker odds simple

On my poker odds page, I explained why knowing the odds is vital to being a money-making poker player. Here I will show you how to calculate those poker odds.
Let’s take the example from my last blog: you have a “gutshot” draw, where there is only one card that will complete your straight – for instance, you have 6-9, and the flop is A-5-8, so you have to hit a 7. I said that would only work 1 in 6 times.
How do I know this? And how can you work out the odds in any poker situation? There’s an easy way, involving a simple “magic” formula; and there’s a harder way, which means relearning some maths you’ve forgotten since school. The easy way is all you need for basic poker; but if you’re more mathematically inclined, read on to the second way.

Step 1. First calculate your “outs”

“Outs” is the term used by poker players for the cards that will help you win. In the above example, only a 7 will help you win. Since there are four 7s in a deck of cards (one of each suit), you have four “outs”.

Step 2. Now apply the magic formula

If you don’t want to be bothered with the detailed mathematics of probability, just follow this simple formula:
* To find the percentage chance of hitting your card on the turn, multiply the number of outs by two
* To find the percentage chance of hitting your card on the turn or the river, multiply the number of outs by four
Is it really that simple? Yes, it is. It’s not absolutely accurate, but it’s very close.
As an example, let’s apply this magic formula to our gutshot draw. We have four outs, so to find out our chances of hitting one of them by the river we multiply 4 x 4, getting 16. So that’s 16% — or to put it another way, 16/100, which some quick mental arithmetic will tell you is roughly 1 in 6. Simple, unless you have no idea what fractions or percentages are, in which case I’m afraid that’s beyond the scope of this blog!
My next blog will explain how you can use these odds in poker to decide whether a bet is worth calling. And that’s it for now. Unless you want to know more about probability, in which case, read on…

Calculating probability the hard way

First, let’s look at probability in general before looking at poker. To find the chance of any particular outcome, you divide the number of desired outcomes into the total number of possible outcomes. Let’s take rolling a die as an example: if you need to roll a 6, your chance of doing so is 1 in 6. That’s one desired outcome divided into the six possible outcomes (since it’s possible to roll any one of six numbers: a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6). And if what you need to roll is a 5 or a 6, that’s two possible outcomes, so you divide 2 into 6, giving you a 1 in 3 chance.
Now let’s apply this to poker. There are 52 cards, so there are 52 possible outcomes when you turn a card over. On the flop, you know what your two hole cards are, as well as the three cards face-up on the flop, so actually there are only 47 cards left that might contain your outs.
In the gutshot draw example above, there are four 7s that will help, so to get your odds, you divide 4 into 47. We don’t all have a calculator in our heads, so when you’re at the poker table, make sums easier by rounding them up. In this case, 4 into 47 is nearly the same as 4 into 48. So, we now know we have a roughly 1 in 12 chance of hitting a 7 on the turn.
This isn’t too hard, but it gets trickier when calculating several rolls of a die, or turns of a card. When you are dealing with probabilities over multiple attempts, you actually first have to calculate the chance of something not happening, rather than the chance of it happening.
The chance of not hitting a 7 on the turn is 43 out of 47: 43/47. The chance then of not hitting a 7 on the river is very slightly different, since there are now only 46 cards left that might include your hoped-for 7. So the chance of not hitting on the river is 42 out of 46: 42/46.
To find the chance of not getting a 7 by the river, you must multiply these two fractions. (Remember, with fractions you have to multiply the tops and bottoms separately.) From this we get: 43/47 x 42/46 = 1806/2162.
To make this complex figure understandable and useful, we need to express it as a percentage. To do that, we want to turn the number under the fraction bar (mathematicians call this the “denominator”) into 100, and find out what that does to the number above the bar (the “numerator”).
If we divide the denominator of 2162 by 2162, it becomes 1. Multiply it again by 100, and it becomes 100. So now we do the same action to the numerator (we do need a calculator for this). 1806 divided by 2162 is 0.84. Multiply that by 100 and we get 84. So now we can see that 1806/2162 is the same thing as 84/100 – 84%, in other words.
Remember, the figure of 84% we just calculated is the chance of not hitting our hoped-for card. So our chances of hitting our card will be 16% — or to put it another way, 16/100, which is about 1 in 6.
If this all sounds a bit tricky, well, it is! But don’t worry: you always have the magic formula to fall back on.
Read the next article in my mini series on how to play a flush draw.

Paul Phua introduces the latest in a series of “In Conversation With Paul Phua” videos, in which the thrilling young poker pros Rui Cao and Wai Kin Yong discuss how to improve your game

How long would you play poker for in a single session? Eight hours? Twelve? Fifteen?
Try 40 or 50 hours!
As you will see in this three-way video interview between myself and the brilliant young players Rui Cao and Wai Kin Yong, we often used to play for two days and nights without stopping. We don’t do that so much anymore, but a round-the-clock game is still pretty common. As we say in the video, one skill you definitely need to develop as a player is stamina!
As I think comes across in this video, when you play poker together for such long periods, you develop a kind of bond, a friendship. But you also develop an awareness of each other’s strengths and weaknesses – and, if you are a good player, you will become conscious of your own.


Rui Cao admits in this interview that one of his weaknesses is playing too loose, wanting to show the table who is boss. “I think it’s an ego problem,” he says.
Then again, it’s also what makes Rui Cao one of France’s most exciting players. It’s six years since Rui Cao first came out to Macau to test himself in the high-stakes cash game against some of the world’s top poker pros (poker players call it “The Big Game”), and I could tell he was instantly drawn to the thrill of those huge pots of tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
As for Wai Kin Yong, he admits his weakness is probably being too “sticky”: “I always find the hands to call,” he says in the video.
Is that a bad thing? Well, on the one hand it’s exciting to make that “hero call”, where you call down a bluff with just Ace high. But on the other hand, if you don’t learn when to lay down a hand, even a hand as good as two pairs, you will lose a lot of money over time. You must ask yourself: are you calling because you’ve thought through the action on every street, and you really think the other person is bluffing? Or is it because your ego won’t let you back down, or you can’t stand not knowing and must see the other person’s cards? It’s something I think you learn as you get older: the patience and humility to fold, and to wait for a better spot further down the line where you are more certain of making money from the hand.
That said, Wai Kin Yong is an exceptional player for one so young. You could say it runs in the family: his father is my friend, the businessman Richard Yong. But Wai Kin Yong also very much has his own style, and has been doing very well in live tournaments. Last September he won the Triton Charity Tournament in Manila, and then just two months later the Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event as well. This February he finished sixth in the Triton Super High Roller Series Main Event. These three pay-outs were together worth more than $3 million!
So it was a pleasure to be able to sit down with these two excellent players, and talk about poker for this video. I hope you enjoy it, and pick up some tips for improving your own playing style.
It’s your decision whether to play loose or tight, aggressively or by trapping other players into making a mistake. Whatever works for you, whatever suits your personality, style and the dynamics of the table you’re on.
But the one thing I think you can definitely take away from this video interview is that good players are always talking about poker with other good players: comparing notes on hands and playing styles, working out what they can learn from each other and how they can play better in future. If you can do this, the next big tournament winner could be you!
Enjoyed this video? Subscribe to the Paul Phua Poker School YouTube channel so you don’t miss the rest in this series. It’s free!

The latest in the new series of Paul Phua Poker School videos is a revealing interview with a true poker great, Phil Ivey. Paul Phua, who talks with him in the video, picks out the highlights

Phil Ivey, the subject of this new Paul Phua Poker School video interview, is definitely one of the all-time poker greats. He has ten World Series of Poker bracelets to his name, having won the first when he was just 23. He has more than $20 million in live tournament earnings, even though he spends most of his time playing cash at high stakes. His famously intimidating stare has become almost a brand in its own right, even though when you get to know Phil Ivey, as you will see from this video, he is actually warm and funny.


This interview was conducted in Manila in February, during the Triton Super High Roller Series, but it seems especially interesting now, since it was announced this week that Phil Ivey will no longer be making videos for his Ivey League site.
And one of the things that strikes me about this interview is an irony that will not be lost on long-term players. When you first start playing, the adrenaline is incredible. If you dare make a bluff you think other players will actually see your shirt moving up and down, as your heart is beating so hard. That’s partly why I used never to bluff when I first started playing!
So you learn to calm your emotions and dampen the adrenaline rush, in order to be hard to read. But does that take some of the thrill out of the game? This is what Phil Ivey has to say in the video interview:
“When you’ve played so much and you’ve played for so many years, it’s really difficult to get a huge thrill… The actual thrill of like, ‘wow I’m betting a lot of money on it’, that’s not really there for me. I don’t really feel that. I haven’t felt that in quite some time, actually.”
Don’t make the mistake from that of thinking Phil Ivey is finished with poker! I am certain he will go on to win many more big tournaments and WSOP bracelets. Because, of course, Phil is still passionate about poker, as am I. As he says in this interview, “I don’t look at it like I’m going to work, because I love doing what I do.”
Maybe it’s just that with poker, as with so many things in life, you never quite recapture the same strong thrill of your first times, of your youth. So my advice to anyone still starting out in poker would be, “enjoy it!” Poker can be hard work, the bad beats can be upsetting, and you must study to improve. But poker is also a fantastic game: a mixture of strategy and chance, where no two hands are ever exactly the same, played against some of the brightest and most interesting people.
Phil Ivey definitely falls into that last category. I have had the pleasure of playing with – and learning from – Phil Ivey many, many times in the last few years, and we have developed both a friendship and a bond of mutual respect. He is kind enough to say in this interview, “What makes Paul Phua so amazing is that he started off playing with some of the best players in the world, and now he is playing in games constantly with the best players in the world and he’s winning in those games.”
Of course, what Phil Ivey is too modest to say outright is that he himself is one of those “best players in the world”! So enjoy this revealing video interview with one of the greats, then go and subscribe to the Paul Phua Poker School YouTube channel. There are many more videos to come in this series, including further interviews with and tips from Phil Ivey.