 Reverse implied odds are the opposite of implied odds. Whereas with implied odds you estimate how much you expect to win after making a draw, with reverse implied odds you estimate how much you expect to lose if you complete your draw but your opponent still holds a better hand. If you find yourself on a draw, you can work out your pot odds to see whether or not a call would be a profitable play in the long run. If you do not have the pot odds to call, you can estimate your implied odds to gauge whether or not a call would still be profitable. Now if you believe you have the implied odds to call a bet, you should also estimate your reverse implied odds to weigh out whether or not you should still call to make your draw.
Although this may sound complicated, it really isn’t too difficult to understand and there are many situations in which you should be aware of your reverse implied odds. For example, if you are facing a bet in a multi way pot holding 6 7 and the flop comes 5 8 T, you are in a situation where you should certainly be considering your reverse implied odds. If the first player to act bets and another player has called, you must think about whether you will have the best hand when you complete your draw. If a 4 or 9 comes then you will have made your straight, but then this also makes a possible flush for another player. In addition, a 9 makes a higher straight a possibility, both of which will beat the straight you are looking to complete.
In this situation we have reverse implied odds because if we make our draw, there is a possibility that one of our opponents will make a better hand than ours. Therefore if we make our straight and our opponent makes a hand like a flush, we will be losing money to him from calling down his bets with our second best hand. If we do not have the pot odds to call the initial raiser’s bet, we should be folding our hand because the reverse implied odds are outweighing any implied odds that we do have. This will be saving us from losing more money in the long run from chasing after draws that may well not end up being the best hand when they are completed.
There are a number of other situations in which we can potentially have reverse implied odds. If we have weak flush draws then there is the potential that another player may be calling to hit a higher flush than ours. So we should be wary when calling bets holding 7 8 on a 2 5 K board because our flush draw is not very strong. The same applies to straight draws when we are drawing to the lower end of a straight. Furthermore, if we are on a flush or straight draw and the board has paired, there is the possibility that an opponent will make or already has made a full house.
Unfortunately for the players that like to be mathematically accurate in drawing situations, reverse implied odds are similar to implied odds in that we cannot put an exact figure on how much we can expect to win or lose. Our reverse implied odds increase when there is a greater chance that our hand will not be the best after completing our draw, and they decrease when there is a greater chance that our hand will be the best after completing our draw. Therefore as a basic rule, we can make calls with some reverse implied odds if our pot odds are very good, but if we have bad pot odds and reverse implied odds, we should be looking to fold.
Evaluation
Reverse implied odds are not there to scare you out of calling bets to make draws, but to make you aware that you stand to lose money if you are calling to complete a weak draw. If there are many players in a pot you should be especially sure that your draw is strong enough to hold up against other players in the pot that might also be calling to make their draws. So if you are on a 9 high flush draw on the flop and there have already been a number of callers in front of you, you have to evaluate whether you think this draw is worth calling for, as there is a good chance that another player is on a higher flush draw than you.
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