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But if you believe that your opponent(s) will put a lot more chips into the pot during future betting rounds when you make your hand, then you have excellent implied odds and can call with more longshot-type draws. A couple of examples would be drawing to an inside straight (it’s 11-1 against making your hand), or calling preflop with a small pair in the hopes of flopping a set (slightly better than 8-1 against). In both cases, you would rarely be able to make these calls based on standard pot odds alone, but in a situation with good implied odds both of these draws become worthwhile.

Basically what you’re trying to figure out is how much more money - beyond what’s in the pot right now - you will be able to get out of your opponents if you do manage to hit your draw. This is very situation-dependant and there’s no one-size-fits-all formula to figure the implied odds. It’s an educated guess. You have to look at all the available information and try your best to extrapolate from that. Implied odds are more likely to be high if one or more of the following is true:

~ The pot is multiway.
~ Your opponents are loose.
~ Your opponents are bad players.
~ You have a loose table image.
~ The hand that you are drawing to will be concealed if you make it.
~ The stakes are No-Limit or Pot-Limit and you and your opponents all have large stacks.

So if you are fortunate enough to make your hand, how many of your opponents will pay you off, and for how much? That’s what you’re trying to estimate. Obviously if you have many opponents in the pot with you, then your draw is more likely to get paid off handsomely. If your opponents are too loose, if they are the type who will call on the river just to “keep you honest,” then again you are going to make more money with this hand. Likewise if your opponents think that you are a loose player who will bet and raise with marginal hands, they will be much more liable to call you all the way to the end. Knowing the other players in your game, how they play, and how they see you as a player, is vital here.

On the other hand, if your opponents know that they are beaten on the river then they will lay down their hands to a bet or raise, and you won’t be able to get their money. That’s why implied odds get better against fishy opponents who are too clueless to know when they are beat, and why it’s so beneficial for your made hand to be concealed. For example if you are drawing to a flush in Texas Hold’em, it will be quite obvious when the third flush card hits the board, and most of your opponents will tighten up considerably when they see they see it. But if you’ve just completed a straight, then the board doesn’t necessarily look so dangerous and you will likely get more calls. A set is one of the best-hidden hands of all in Hold’em, and so can be extremely profitable to draw to with the right implied odds. It’s worth mentioning here that you should be reasonably certain that the hand you’re drawing to will be the best if you make it. After all, the highest implied odds in the world won’t do you a bit of good if you are drawing to a second-best hand.

Finally, implied odds are generally more powerful in the big bet games like Pot-Limit and No-Limit, simply because the size of future bets can be so enormous. If you can see the flop fairly cheaply, it’s often worthwhile to call in these games with any pair or any suited-connector-type hand. Because if lightning strikes and the flop hits you hard, you can conceivably break your opponent(s) and win all their chips. That’s why stack size is so important when figuring implied odds. Winning every chip your opponent has in front of him won’t earn you much profit if your opponent is already short-stacked. By the same token, if you are short-stacked then that severely limits how much you can win from anybody in future betting rounds. Even if your opponent has a large stack of chips, you must consider the likelihood that he will actually call a big bet from you on the end. Again, knowing your opponents is crucial. In short, anything that impedes your ability to get chips out of your opponents on subsequent rounds is going to squelch your implied odds.