What is Fold Equity in Poker and How to Use It?

Every time you are involved in a hand of poker, you have to think about the equity your hand has against your opponent’s perceived range or the range you put them on.

However, there are many times when you can get some extra equity in a hand by making a bet and getting the other guy to fold his cards, denying him his fair share of the pot.

This extra equity is known as fold equity, and it is one of the key poker terms you will need to grasp if you want to master the game.

This guide will discuss the concept of fold equity, how to use it at poker tables, and what makes it so important. Let’s start by looking deeper into the meaning of fold equity and explaining how it works in practice.

What is Fold Equity in Poker?

In theoretical terms, fold equity in poker is the additional equity you gain by having your opponent fold their cards some percentage of the time.

We win the pot right then and there every time our opponents fold their cards, whether before the flop or on any of the later streets. This means we have gained equity, as most hands probably had some chance to beat us by a showdown in most situations.

Each time we make a bet in poker, we are banking on our opponent folding their cards some of the time. Even if we do have the best hand, getting a fold is a positive result, as we deny all the equity our opponent may have and take down the pot right then and there.

Any fold equity you gain from making bets can be added to your hand equity to create your total equity in the hand using this simple formula:

Total Equity = Hand Equity + Fold Equity

So, for instance, let us imagine a hand in which you only have a flush draw and about 35% equity against your opponent's range.

While this number may not seem too great at first, there is a chance to get it up significantly by making some bets and adding fold equity on top of it.

If you can assume that your opponent is going to fold about 50% of his hands to a bet, you can add significant equity to your hand and deny one-half of their 65% hand equity.

This way, your total equity will go up from 35% to a total of 67.5% (35% + 65%/2) when you add all the instances in which your opponent will fold their cards.

The more fold equity you can generate in the hand with your bets, the more overall equity you will have, and the more EV you will be printing with your play.

Calculating Fold Equity

In the previous section, we used an example of fold equity and calculated it based on a simple example of an imaginary poker hand. However, you may not yet be fully aware of how to calculate fold equity in the middle of a hand, so let’s get into a bit more detail.

Calculating the fold equity is quite simple, but it is predicated on one key assumption. You must make an educated guess on how often your opponent will fold.

The formula to use is:

Fold Equity = Chance of Fold * Player’s Hand Equity

When making this calculation, you should determine your opponent’s hand range and overall equity against you.

You will never be able to get this 100% right, but if you can get a good estimate of which hands your opponent can still have, you will be able to determine what percentage of the overall equity belongs to them.

From there, you will need to consider how many hands they will fold to different bet sizes. The more of their hands they fold, the more extra equity you get.

However, if you have to make a massive bet to get them to fold just a small percentage of their range, this will not work out either.

You will need to find a balance between these numbers and a bet size that will eliminate enough hands from their range to make you gain equity instead of losing it by making a bet.

When Fold Equity Works Best

Fold equity is a concept best used for what we call “semi-bluffing.” This is the art of bluffing with a hand that has a substantial amount of equity, such as a flush draw or a straight draw.

These hands have plenty of equity against even the strongest of ranges, as they can improve to the nuts or virtual nuts on later streets, regardless of which hand our opponent wakes up with.

Yet, these hands' equity is often not big enough to continue playing them profitably. Even when it is, we may be able to gain even more equity by taking aggressive instead of a passive action, winning more chips than we would otherwise.

Let us assume you are playing against a fairly aggressive player in a $2/5 live cash game, and you face a $20 raise from this player on the button. You call in the big blind holding Tc9c and go to the flop.

The flop brings 8c7c3h, a board that gives us an open-ended straight flush draw, the holy grail of all drawing hands. You check, and our opponent fires a c-bet of $30 into the $42 pot, making a fairly large bet.

Regardless of what hand our opponent has or how his range looks, your Tc9c has a ton of equity, and we could easily profitably make the call here.

For example, if he had a hand like AdAh, we would be a 56% favorite to win the hand. Against AdKd, you would be a 69% favorite, but still far from having the hand locked down.

Against your opponent’s entire perceived range, you will be a favorite in this spot, but there are still many hands in there that have a lot of equity, such as AdKd, which can’t realistically keep going if they face aggressive action.

By putting in a big raise right here, you will have a chance to deny all of that equity and win many more chips than you would by just calling.

Let us imagine that your Ts9s has 55% equity against the opponent’s entire range in this spot. If you call, your equity remains at 55%. However, if you make a raise and get your opponent to fold out 60% of his range, you get the following:

Total Equity = 55% + (60% * 45%)

Total Equity = 55% + 27%

Total Equity = 83%

Because your opponent only showed some aggression by c-betting, his range is still quite wide and will contain many hands that can’t really sustain your raise.

In reality, you may get even more than 60% folds if you make a big raise in this situation, and some players may even be tempted to fold hands like big pairs if you make the raise large enough.

Using Fold Equity in Poker Tournaments

Fold equity can be especially useful for tournament poker players, who often encounter situations where their stack is relatively small compared to the blinds.

This makes stealing the blinds and antes sitting in the pot very valuable, and this is the perfect time to make full use of fold equity.

As your chip stack sits in the 5-20bb range, you will be forced to steal the blinds a lot. While you could sometimes get it done with a min-raise off your 20bb stack, players often opt for an all-in play with a fairly wide range instead.

If you have ever watched high-stakes tournaments on TV, you have surely seen players go all-in with hands like T9s or J9s from late positions with fairly large tournament stacks.

Of course, they are trying to maximize their fold equity and only get called by the absolute strongest parts of their opponent's ranges.

For instance, if you shove 20bb from the button into two players with 30bb stacks, it is not likely they will risk losing a large portion of their stack with a hand like A9s. In fact, doing so would usually be a mistake on their part.

Your hand will have a lot of equity even when called by a hand like AK or AQ, but most of the time, it is going to pick up the 2.5bb that's already in the pot from the blinds and antes.

As a tournament poker player, you will need to use fold equity often and to the maximum if you want to stand any real chance against competent tournament opponents.

Tournament Fold Equity Example

You are playing a $20 online MTT with over 2,000 players. The field is now down to 340, and you are close to being in the money.

With blinds at $800/1600, you have a stack of $27,000. You look down at 6c6d in the cutoff, and all players fold to you.

This situation often baffles novice tournament players. Going all-in seems like “too much” to them, so they opt for a small raise or even a limp, hoping to somehow win the pot without risking much.

While a min-raise is a legitimate option, especially in higher-stakes games, an all-in show in this spot is perfectly profitable.

Since you have close to 20bb, your remaining three opponents won’t be able to make loose calls. On the other hand, when they do wake up with a hand like AK or AQ, you will be a slight favorite when they do make a call.

The only bad scenarios are when you run into a pocket pair, but some players may even fold a hand like 77-99 in this spot.

Going all-in will maximize your fold equity and give you the best possible chance to win the pot outright without ever having to flip over your cards.

Winning the $4,000 dead chips in the middle will significantly boost your stack, and doing this a few times will allow you to keep surviving and be in a better spot for a big double-up when you finally do end up in a showdown confrontation.

Tournament poker is all about fold equity and getting your opponents to let you have as many chips as possible without a fight.

The more often you can get fold equity to work for you, the more often you will run deep and win online and live tournaments.

Maximum Fold Equity for Maximum Gains

Fold equity is one of the most powerful weapons you will use at poker tables, so it is important to learn how to use it properly and often. While relying on your cards to do the talking is fine to a point, you will need to do more than that if you hope to win in the long run.

By betting with your bluffs and semi-bluffs and getting your opponents to fold hands with equity, you will increase your overall EV and turn yourself into a profitable player.

You now know how to calculate fold equity and how to use it to calculate your total equity. All that remains is to get the experience of knowing how often players will fold to their bets and which spots to use to apply fold equity to the maximum.

The more you play, the more you should become aware of the best board textures and situations to bluff, and your fold equity gains will increase dramatically as you continue to improve.

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