Fold Equity Explained

What is fold equity? It’s definitely nothing you normally read about in poker room reviews or mass produced strategy articles. Before we think about what fold equity is, it’s important to understand what we mean by equity when it comes to poker.  Equity is how much of the pot belongs to us, as participants in the pot. For example, all things being equal, if there are four players competing for a pot, each player has 25 percent equity. Of course, all things are not equal, since each player has different cards of different values.

Determining Equity
If there is $200 in a pot and you think your cards are good enough to win that pot 40 percent of the time, you have $80 of equity in that pot. This means that staying in the pot at that time is worth $80 to you, so if it costs you less than $80 to play, you will.

Equity Complications
Of course, you don’t know your opponents’ cards, so you don’t really know whether your cards are good enough to win. Furthermore, your cards may not be good enough now, but a certain percentage of the time you may catch a card that allows you to win, which must also be factored into equity considerations.

Fold Equity
Fold equity is a measure of equity that has nothing to do with the strength of your hand. It is simply the amount of equity in the pot that’s based on the likelihood that your opponents will fold to a bet. In a situation where you will call an all-in bet, you are often better off moving all-in first because of the fold equity. When you call, your equity is based solely on the strength of your hand, but when you move in, you have additional equity based on the possibility that your opponent will fold. This equity, which is the size of the pot times the percentage your opponent will fold, is your fold equity.

Using Fold Equity
You may be tempted to use fold equity to turn a marginal call into a raise.  This is okay as long as your expectations are realistic.  For example, let’s say you’re playing a 6max game, it’s folded to the button who makes it 3x.  SB folds and you call in the big blind with suited connectors.  You flop low flush draw and decide to donk out.  The button puts in a pretty substantial raise.  You can’t really call and hope to hit your 9 outs, but if you jam over the button’s raise, he’ll probably fold a significant part of his range.  If there really is no way an opponent will fold, or he will only fold 10 percent of the time and you need him to fold 25 percent of the time, fold equity calculations will not help you.