Calculating Pot Equity

A lot of players tend to confuse pot equity with pot odds, and that’s something that has to be put to bed right off the bat. Pot odds help a player determine what their percentage is of hitting a certain hand in relation to the betting on each applicable street. Pot Equity more or less helps that same player determine the actual strength of the hand they hold – particularly when faced with the decision to raise, build the pot, then deciding which action is the best to improve your win rate.
In summary, ACTUAL pot equity is the calculated value of your hand in comparison to the hand range of all of your opponents.

Like other odds explanations, this one is probably easiest to grasp in a fixed limit game rather than a No Limit-type structure. Pot equity is better utilized anyways in a LHE game, just because hand ranges and expected value (EV) are so much more key to building pots and winning hands.
For example, lets say you hold a hand like Q Q in the cutoff position. There’s 3 limpers in front of you at your $15/$30 LHE game. You have a pretty big hand here, and your pot equity here is most likely more than 3 to 1! The fact you have a high EV here means you should almost certainly raise in your spot. Since you’re also more than a 30% favorite (minus you running into a limper with KK or AA) here, your raise means you get added value for your hand, as well as a larger pot for you to take down.

This may be a tough concept to grasp at first – but as you gain more experience at the tables and see a variety of different hands and situations, it becomes a little clearer. Heck, even the best and brightest of poker minds can probably agree that Pot Equity is just one of those terms that can’t be explained without ripping your hair out at times. However, I do hope the explanations and hand example above help out in your search to understand it.