At the risk of sounding stupid...

silentbob

I was wondering if someone could try & explain about fold equity?

I see it coming up a lot in various posts here & I think I know what people are talking about but am not quite 100% sure so if anyone can explain it in simple terms it'd be greatly appreciated.

sikas

In Response to At the risk of sounding stupid...:

I was wondering if someone could try & explain about fold equity? I see it coming up a lot in various posts here & I think I know what people are talking about but am not quite 100% sure so if anyone can explain it in simple terms it'd be greatly appreciated.
Posted by silentbob

Fold equity is a concept in poker strategy that is especially important when a player becomes short-stacked in a no limit (or possibly pot limit) tournament.^[1] It is the equity a player can expect to gain due to the opponent folding to his or her bets. It equates to:The first half of the formula can be estimated based on reads on opponents or their previous actions. The second part is the equity obtained when the opponent(s) fold to your raise (i.e. the total current pot), minus the equity resulting in case your opponent(s) call your raise (i.e. your showdown equity in the post-raise pot). As the post-raise pot is larger than the current pot, fold equity can be positive as well as negative.^[2]Fold equity becomes an important concept for short stacks for the following reason. Opponents can be considered likely to call all-ins with a certain range of hands. When they will have to use a large percentage of their stack to make the call, this range can be expected to be quite narrow (it will include all the hands the caller expects to win an all-in against the bettor). As the percentage of stack needed to call becomes lower, the range of cards the caller will need becomes wider, and he or she becomes less likely to fold. Consequently, fold equity diminishes. There will be a point at which a caller will need a sufficiently small percentage of their stack to call the all-in that they will do so with any two cards. At that point, the all-in bettor will have no fold equity.

DeucesLive

Although that's a perfect and accurate description of fold equity, if you want a more human and non-wiki-esque explanation...

Fold equity is simply adding the chance of making your opponent fold into your hand strength. A mid strength hand like suited connectors and low/mid pp's become infinitely more profitable when you take their fold equity into account- i.e the possibility of making your opponent fold. 87 is behind tons of hands, but you'll make most of them fold, meaning at least 50% of the time you take a pot down uncontested- but should you get called by a big pair or overcards, it has a sizeable amount of outs, since your cards are normally live and you have flush and straight draws.

It's the big reason why raising and shoving allin is preferable to calling- if you call with 87, for example, you're essentially putting everything on hitting your cards. If you shove with 87 you're firstly asking the person if they're prepared to risk their stack (fold equity) and then have the possibility of outdrawing them.

The shorter your stack, the lower your fold equity. A player is unlikely to call off 80% of their stack with anything but a massive holding, but they're likely to call off 5% of it with Q high. Lower stack=diminished fold equity, which is why in tournaments you need to shove around the 10bb stage as soon as possible whilst your fold equity remains high- once you're in the 3/4/5bb stage, the bb is likely to call you with virtually anything, meaning you have zero fold equity and are relying solely on the cards to hit.

silentbob

Cheers Deuces, that makes sense now.

When you put it like that I can see that I did pretty much know this now but this has given me a bit more clarification.