Poker pot odds are a basic but none the less critical concept that many people poorly understand or simply do not understand at all. The pot odds are essentially the size of the pot in relation to the size of the bet; if the pot is $10 and your opponent bets $1 you are getting pot odds of 10:1.
If you have only a 20% chance of winning on the next card this is a good bet and you should take it. Your 20% of the pot is $2 and you are only paying $1 to win $2, so clearly this is quite profitable (and why you should never bet 10% of the pot!).
The most common use for pot odds is determining whether or not you should call a bet when you have a drawing or speculative hand but this is not to say if you are short of the required pot odds you must fold because there is also the profit making potential of the other streets; still it serves as a very useful guide to making decisions. Let us say you have an ace high flush draw, in a $20 pot in a $1/$2 no limit game, on the turn. Your opponent bets $20. Should you call?
The answer is simply no. Your flush has approximately a 1 in 5 chance of hitting on the river (it's less than that, but we'll keep it simple). The pot is $20, your opponents bet is $20 and it costs you $20 to call; you are risking $20 to win $40, but you can only expect to win $40 25% of the time.
Therefore you are betting $20 to win $10; which is of course a losing proposition, unless you can get an additional $40 on the river. If your opponent would call a $200 bet on the river, when you hit your nut flush, it would of course be profitable to call the bet on the turn. This is the concept of implied odds.
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