Fold Equity: Mastering Strategic Poker Play
Have you ever put out a bet hoping that your opponent will fold? The percent of the time an opponent folds to your bet is known as your “fold equity.” The concept of fold equity has always been with us, though its name is somewhat new. The idea comes from semi-bluffing, a bet made with a hand that’s probably not the best right now but an indicator that stands a good chance of outdrawing any opponents who call. Adding the idea of fold equity to your chances of improving to the best hand might raise an arrow from one that would otherwise be a loser to one worth playing.
Thinking in terms of fold equity allows a poker player to become creative with hands that would otherwise be folded if considered solely from the perspective of the hand’s chances of improving to the best writing on future betting rounds. That’s why good poker players often raise with otherwise suspect hands. They’ve done the math and realize that a bet from a hand that’s currently only a 40 percent shot to win but has a 15 percent chance of inducing the opposing player to fold now has a 55 percent chance of winning.
While the concept of fold equity applies to all forms of poker, it is much more prevalent in no-limit games where you can determine the size of your bet. It is also used frequently in tournament poker, as the variations in stack sizes can evaluate how much fold equity you have.
What Influences Your Fold Equity?
To determine how much fold equity you have, there are a few factors that you need to consider.
Your Table Image
To keep it simple, the tighter your table image, the more fold equity you have because they will assume you have a good hand. If you have been raising a lot pre-flop or betting and raising flops recently, a bet now may not be believable and will reduce your fold equity.
Your Opponent’s Image
Is your opponent capable of folding after they’ve limped in? Do they give up their blinds? If so, a raise has more fold equity than if they are stubborn and like to see the flop. Are they capable of folding a top pair, a middle pair, or a pocket pair? Do they fold to scare cards? If so, a bet against them has greater fold equity than against a calling station.
Your Opponent’s Hand Range
Many of the factors below go into making up your opponent’s hand range, but the main concept to be thinking about when in hand is; “Of all the hands in my opponent’s range, how many of them will fold if I bet or raise.”
Your Position
In general, a raise from an early position will garner more fold equity than a button raise because of the perceived strength of your hand range. A late position raise may be seen as simply stealing the blinds.
The Stack Sizes
In tournament play, stack sizes are increasingly important as they become shallower in relation to the blinds. If you or your opponent is below 40 big blinds, not only will your opponent have to think about your current bet, but they will also have to worry about future bets where their entire stack can end up in the middle. They must determine if calling this bet is worth playing for all their chips.
Another perspective also applies to tournaments where a short-stacked opponent raises, leaving themselves only a few big blinds behind. A re-raise here will not have much fold equity because your opponent is so short that they are desperate. Similarly, shoving an all-in pre-flop into a medium-sized stack you can damage will have more fold equity than pushing it into a monster stack or a desperate short stack.
The Number of Opponents
Put…. the more people in the hand, the less fold equity you have. The odds of someone calling or raising go up as you increase the number of players in the pot. This commonly applies to raising limpers pre-flop and continuation betting on the flop. You may be itching to bluff, but understand that your success rate will decrease as the number of players increases.
The Board Texture and the Betting Line
Is it believable that you actually have the hand you’re representing, or did you randomly decide to bluff the river? If your bet tells an accurate story, it will have more fold equity and a higher success rate.
The Stage of the Tournament
If you’re a tournament player, your bet or raise will often have significantly more fold equity during the bubble stage…. be that the money bubble, final table bubble, or any other major pay jump. Know your opponents and pick on those trying to creep into the money.
Bet Sizing
Betting bigger doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get more folds. In fact, against some opponents, you’ll get called more often with a larger bet since it looks like a bluff. You should aim to mathematically size your chances to have the most fold equity and the highest long-term expected value. In many situations, the higher the percentage you think your opponent will fold, the smaller you can make your bet.
Fold Equity in Practice
Here are a few examples illustrating the concept of fold equity.
Let’s say you’re in a tournament, and the blinds are 100/200. You are in the big blind with a 3,200 chip stack (16 big blinds), and the button, which has 5,000, raises to 500.
You’ve observed that this player is very loose and aggressive but seems able to make laydowns, and your image is fairly tight. You conclude that this player’s raising range consists of about 25% of all hands, including all pairs, all Broadway cards, suited connectors, Ace-rag, and various suited face cards.
But what about his calling range? Since he can make laydowns, he will probably call your all-in bet with 99+, AJ, AQ, and AK pocket pairs. That is only 6.3% of hands. If he is raising 25% of his hands and calling 6.3% of his hands, this means he is only calling about 25% of the time and is thus folding 75% of the time. You can profitably go all-in with a wide range of hands and have a high degree of fold equity.
Now, let’s change your opponent to tight and you to loose. His close raising range includes pairs 77+, AT+, and KQ. This represents 9.4% of hands. Since you are a loose-aggressive player, let’s assume his calling range is 88+, AJs, AQ, and AK, which is 5.9% of hands. This means he only folds about 37% of the time and calls 63%. And, of course, when you are called, it will be with a good hand. In this situation, you will not have that much fold equity and need a good indicator to go all in with.
Now let’s go back to the original scenario of you being tight, but change your stack size to 1,600, as shown below:
In this case, even though your image is tight, you will not have much fold equity. After he raises to 500 and you go all in, there will be 2,200 in the pot, and it will be 1,100 for them to call, giving your opponent 2-1 odds where he can profitably call with almost any two cards. Additionally, your stack size doesn’t do much damage to his, whereas in the original example, a 3,200 hit to his 5,000 stack is a major blow.
Tournament Pre-Flop Shoving
Like the above example, there will be many times in a tournament where it will fold to you, and you have to decide to go all in. Before you factor in your cards, you should factor in the players left to act behind you and what you think their calling ranges are. This will help determine your fold equity.
Let’s say you are in the small blind vs. an opponent you think will call you with 77+, A9+, and KQ. That’s about 11% of hands, which means they will fold 89% of the time! You may also be playing online and benefit from a HUD (Head’s Up Display) that gives that player’s VPIP stats. If they are playing 15% of hands, for example, they are at least folding 85% of the time, and in fact, many of the hands they may have played aren’t hands they are willing to call your all in with.
Post Flop Fold Equity & Bet Sizing
Let’s say the river brings a scare card that makes you decide that bluffing is a good play. Before you make a bet, use the factors listed above and make an educated guess of the percentage of time that your opponent will fold to this bet. For this example, pretend the river brings a flush, and you put your opponent on a top pair type hand. Based on your read of the situation, you think your opponent will assume you are only bluffing about 15% of the time and will thus fold 85% of the time.
To make your bluff have a positive expected value, you should size your bet so that the pot odds they are getting make it an unprofitable decision for them to call. If you bet ½ the pot, they will be getting 3-1 odds, which translates to them needing to think they are ahead 1 out of every four times (or 25%). Since your read was that they would only think you are bluffing 15% of the time, this bet size has to fold equity and will make a profit in the long run.
The danger of fold equity is that many weak players use this notion to talk themselves into playing hands that ought to be folded because their assessment of fold equity is wrong. If, for example, you’re playing against an opponent who seldom folds and cannot be bluffed, forget about fold equity. You have none. Instead, all you should do is value bet your good hands because while you can’t bluff this kind of player, you can and will get paid off every time you wager.
Conclusion
Understanding how much fold equity you have is a very important concept that poker players of all skill levels often overlook. Many poker players can become robotic and keep betting, hoping their opponent will fold. They pour the aggression on and fail to think about the likelihood that their bets will be successful. While aggression is good, blind aggression can be a major leak.
The overall message from this lesson is to not just blindly check or bet in a given situation because you think an opponent is “weak” or “strong.” Think about your opponent’s hand range and what percentage of time they will fold to a bet or raise. This is your fold equity; you should always know how much you have and how to use it.
