Poker Calculator: Free Odds, Equity, ICM and Bankroll Tools Explained (2026)

What a poker calculator is

“Poker calculator” is a family of tools rather than one program. Each answers a different question, and each uses a different piece of maths. Some work with cards (who is ahead and by how much), some with chips and money (what a stack or a knockout is worth), some with long-run results (how much a winning player can lose before the maths catches up).

All of them rest on two ideas: probability (how often something happens) and expected value (what a decision earns on average if you repeat it many times). Once you understand those two, every calculator below becomes easy to read.

Free poker calculators on RatePokerClub

All tools run in the browser, on desktop and phone, without registration. You can find them in the Tools menu at the top of the site.

Equity: who is ahead and by how much

Equity is the share of the pot your hand owns right now. If the hand were run out to the river thousands of times with no more betting, that is the share you would collect on average. It equals your chance to win plus your part of any split pots.

Equity changes on every street, so a good calculator accepts a board. In the equity calculator you pick two cards for each player or switch an opponent to a range — all hands they could hold — with a slider, presets, the 13×13 grid or text like “TT+, AQs+, AKo”. When the number of possible boards is manageable it enumerates every one and gives an exact answer; when there are billions (range vs range preflop) it runs a Monte Carlo simulation and shows the margin of error.

Numbers are averaged over all suit combinations. Specific suits move them by about a percentage point — check any spot in the calculator.

Pot odds: how much equity a call needs

Equity alone doesn’t tell you whether to call. You compare it with pot odds — the share of the final pot you have to put in:

If your equity is higher than the number in the table, the call makes money in the long run; if lower, it loses — unless you expect to win extra chips on later streets when you hit (implied odds).

Outs and the rule of 2 and 4

Outs are the cards that improve your hand to the likely winner. A flush draw has 9 outs (13 cards of the suit minus the 4 you see), an open-ended straight draw 8, a gutshot 4. At the table nobody has a calculator, so players use a shortcut:

1. 1
   Count your clean outs — cards that give you the best hand, not a second-best one.
2. 2
   One card to come (flop to turn, or turn to river): outs × 2 ≈ your chance in percent.
3. 3
   Two cards to come (on the flop when you are all-in and will see both turn and river): outs × 4.
4. 4
   Above 8 outs the rule of 4 overestimates: subtract the outs over 8 (15 outs: 60 − 7 = 53%).

EV: the number behind every decision

EV (expected value) is what a decision earns on average if you could repeat it thousands of times. Every calculator on this page is, in the end, an EV calculator: equity and pot odds give the EV of a call, ICM gives the EV of a stack in money, push/fold charts list the hands with positive EV for a shove.

This is the main idea of winning poker: you can’t control results in a single hand, only the EV of your decisions. We explain it step by step, with more examples, in how to win at poker.

Push/fold charts for short stacks

With 10–15 big blinds or fewer, raising and folding to a re-raise wastes too many chips, so the game becomes all-in or fold. The push/fold charts show heads-up Nash equilibrium ranges: which hands the small blind shoves and which hands the big blind calls, from 1 to 25 BB, with or without antes.

Each cell in the 13×13 grid shows the largest effective stack at which the hand is still a shove. For example, K2o is marked 11.5 in the push chart without antes: shove it from the small blind with up to 11.5 BB. Antes widen both ranges because the pot you win when the opponent folds gets bigger.

The charts are heads-up and in chips: at a full table with more players left to act, push tighter, and near the money tighten further because of ICM. All-in-or-fold games are covered in our guide to AoF poker.

ICM: when chips are not money

In a cash game a chip is worth its face value. In a tournament prizes are paid by place, so the chip leader can never win more than first prize, and a short stack is often guaranteed at least the next payout. ICM (Independent Chip Model) turns stacks into money: the chance to finish first equals your share of chips, and the lower places are worked out the same way among the remaining players.

A chip chop overpays the leader; an ICM deal gives each player their current equity. The ICM calculator works for 2–10 players: enter stacks and payouts (or pick a ready-made structure — SNG, Spin & Gold, final tables, satellites) to see $EV, chances of each place, deal options and the risk premium for calling an all-in. A separate tab builds prize payouts by place without stacks for any number of entries, so you can design a club tournament’s prize pool. The basics of tournament formats are in our poker tournaments guide.

Bounty calculators: Ocean KO and Speed Racer

In knockout tournaments every all-in has a second prize: the opponent’s bounty. To use it in a decision you convert the money you get immediately into chips: money to your balance ÷ full buy-in × starting stack. The bounty lowers the equity you need to call.

Example from the Speed Racer calculator: a $10.50 buy-in, an opponent’s $5 bounty in a PKO — $2.50 goes to your balance right away. $2.50 ÷ $10.50 × 10 BB ≈ 2.4 BB added to the pot on the first level. When the blinds double, the same knockout is worth about 1.2 BB.

Variance, bankroll and the blind timer

Variance is the spread of results around your expectation. It is measured by the standard deviation: in cash games in bb per 100 hands (for No-Limit Hold’em often somewhere around 80–100 bb/100). The spread grows with the square root of the sample, while your expected profit grows in a straight line — that is why the long run is so long.

• Variance calculator — simulates thousands of tournament samples from your buy-in, field size and ROI: chance of being down, typical and severe downswings, how far your real ROI can drift.
• Bankroll calculator — buy-in norms for NLH and PLO cash, MTT and SNG, plus risk of ruin by the formula e^(−2 · winrate · bankroll ÷ σ²): at 5 bb/100, σ 90 and 30 buy-ins it is about 2.5%.
• Blind timer — not maths but just as useful for clubs and home games: ready structures (turbo, standard, deepstack, home game), sound alerts, breaks, average stack, fullscreen on a TV.

More on swings in poker variance explained, and on how much to keep for club poker in bankroll for club poker.

Which poker calculator to use when

Can you use a poker calculator while playing?

• Allowed and useful
• Reviewing hands after the session in the equity calculator.
• Memorising push/fold ranges and pot odds before you play.
• Checking a final table deal with ICM when the tournament is paused for a deal (if the club allows deals).
• Planning stakes with the bankroll and variance calculators.
• Running a home or club tournament with the blind timer.

• Risky or banned
• Keeping an odds calculator open next to the table and entering cards during a hand.
• Programs that read the table and suggest actions.
• Trackers and HUDs in apps that don’t allow them — see HUDs and trackers in poker apps.

The goal is to make the numbers automatic: once you know that a flush draw is about 35% by the river and a half-pot bet needs 25%, you don’t need anything open. A good place to start is the right starting hands — most money is won or lost before the flop.

ClubGG clubs from our catalog

Ranked by player reviews; each club page lists its games, rake and rakeback.

RatePokerClub catalogTop ClubGG clubs by player reviews

All clubs

#1MOJO 24.51 reviewRakeback 50%Union: Massive Poker UnionOpen club #2MOJO 1No reviews yetRakeback 50%Union: AllinUnionOpen club #3Mr Pink PantherNo reviews yetRakeback 40%Open club #4ZerakeNo reviews yetRakeback Zero RakeOpen club #5POKER VIBE UANo reviews yetRakeback 40%Open club

FAQ