When learning poker, knowing your chance to win against your opponents is an extremely important skill to develop. In fact, it’s impossible to have a skilled decision-making process without an understanding of equity. How do we learn about odds and equity? By practicing with an equity calculator.
A poker odds and equity calculator is a software program or app that instantly works out the chance of winning between different hands or ranges on any street.
An example equity calculation made on the flop
Why Do I Need to Know Equities?
Nearly every poker decision revolves around the equity of hand ranges. In fact, if you don’t gain a relative understanding of how to calculate equities while you play, you will be at a severe disadvantage and often completely lost during a poker hand. For example, it’s virtually impossible to know whether any call should be made without understanding your odds.
What Are the Best Equity Calculators?
There’s no need to get fancy or pay any money when choosing an equity calculator. In fact, there are only two software programs that I recommend and both are free.
- Pokerstove
Pokerstove is the original equity and odds calculator. It has been around seemingly forever, although it has not been updated or changed since 2013. Even so, it is still the program that I use for nearly all of my equity calculations during my study. However, it’s fairly difficult to find. The website of the company that created it has been down since 2013, but luckily I still had a copy of my computer. I hope it works well for you! Here is the download link: PokerStove Download - Equilab
Equilab is a nice alternative to Pokerstove. It has a few additional features for you advanced players out there. There is also an Omaha version available.
Screenshots
