How a Poker Odds Calculator Can Help You
To understand how the poker odds calculator can help, you need to first appreciate the fact that poker is a game of both chance and skill.
Put another way, this is to say that poker is a game where you winning or losing depends on both your poker skills and your 'luck' that day.
To be sure, the skills seem to be more of a determining factor than luck in as far as the possibility of winning a poker game goes, but we can't altogether underestimate the role of 'luck' in the game.
At its core, the poker odds calculator can be seen as a tool that has been developed out of long term and profound statistical analysis - as to what tends to happen whenever a poker player makes various moves in the game.
So starting with any combination of cards (both known and unknown cards) the typical poker odds calculator will tell you what the odds of your coming up with the best (winning) hand at the end of the game are - which can be a very handy tool in case it is money that you are playing the poker for, by way of showing you where to put your money and where not to put your money.
The typical modern poker odds calculator is usually graphically designed, to represent the poker cards and poker players (usually with a drop down menu from which you can select the number of players you would be playing against - which is typically anything from 2 to 10), and an option to 'clear the table' after every calculation.
Then there is usually the 'calculate odds' button, upon which the main functionality of the underlying program is based, so that upon selecting a given number of players, and a given starting combination of cards, the poker odds calculator will usually proceed to work out what the odds of coming up with the winning hand under that scenario are - so that, in case you are playing poker with real money, you can make up your mind whether to 'put your money' on the table or not, given the odds of your winning.
Behind the graphics of the poker odds calculator, of course, is a complicated statistical analysis and situational simulation program that crunches the accumulated data from various poker playing situations vis a vis the situation it is presented with, simulates the various scenarios that could arise from the situation it is presented with (typically at a very high speed that not even the quickest thinking of humans could ever dream of matching) - and then gives results in terms of things like the expectable odds of a win, or a tie, results that you can then proceed to apply in your poker playing decisions in real time in case you are playing the poker online while you run the poker odds calculator on another window.
Of course, most poker odds calculator versions come with tense disclaimers to the effect that their results are based on statistical simulation - and they can therefore offer no guarantees of giving you a poker win, though what we know is that they can at least increase your chances of winning, especially if you apply the data they yield properly and consistently.