4 Texas Hold’em Practical Skills: Insurance!(Episode 2)

I believe that you all still remember the 2 skills we introduce in the last episode of 4 Texas Hold’em Practical Skills Episode. Today’s context might be a little harder to understand compared to what we have shared before. Though as a player of Hold’em, we can’t stop learning from the game. So to increase our win rate, one must concentrate on the game itself. Today let’s take a look at the Hold’em Insurance system and how we may utilize it.

• Watch More Texas Hold’em Poker Strategy: Poker Strategy

Texas Hold’em Practical Skills 3 | Insurance Introduction

Next, we are going to take a look at a setup that we’ve never mentioned before. It’s the insurance system in Hold’em. Though those who are already experienced players might be heard of it before, most of the new players don’t know what it is. You can indeed buy insurance while playing Hold’em, it’s a setup different from blackjack itself.

Don’t worry. Those who think the insurance in Hold’em is hard simply because the insurance in Blackjack is way too easy. It only applies when the house shows an Ace and it only allows half of your betting amount. The odds are 1 to 2. That’s all. Though the insurance in Hold’em is different from it. In order for players to be able to buy insurance, at least two of the players have to be all-in already in the pot. The board must remain at least one street left and both players need to show their hands. Then once the insurance is purchased, the dealer will deal out the remaining cards.

During the time when both players are all-in, there will be one who’s ahead and one who’s behind. The insurance is based on how many cards are left in the deck that could turn the table around, in short, it’s called a bad beat. The dealer will ask the player if he wishes to buy insurance for the pot. If in the end indeed the player ahead loses, he may still win the insurance money back. As for the money purchased for the insurance, it’s deducted from the pot.

Texas Hold’em Insurance | Examples

Now what’s left is the way to calculate the odds for the insurance. As we’ve mentioned before, we need to calculate how many cards are left in the deck that could make the bad beat happens. This is normally calculated by the dealer of the table. That’s why the Hold’em dealer has considered the most skilled dealer compared to other games since Hold’em dealers need to know the hand types and all the possible combinations that can make a change.
In Hold’em, we called the cards that can turn the table outs. Say two players were all-in, A holding Q of clubs and K of spades while B is holding 56 of hearts. The board cards are 9 of hearts, 10 of hearts, J of diamonds, and Q of diamonds. In this case, the ahead hand is the straight hand since A is already holding a K that can form the straight of 9/10/J/Q/K. Though as long as the river comes a heart then Player B’s hand beats Player A’s hand since the flush is stronger than the straight. There are 13 cards with the same flush in a poker deck, so we can calculate the remaining helping cards in the deck are 13-2(holding hands)-2( board cards)= 9. We don’t count the ones others may have held, only the most possible hands and that’s 9. Then we may apply it to the following odds chart.

Texas Hold’em Insurance | Odds Chart

• 1(Outs): 1 to 30.
• 2(Outs): 1 to 16. 
• 3(Outs): 1 to 10. 
• 4(Outs): 1 to 8. 
• 5(Outs): 1 to 6. 
• 6(Outs): 1 to 5. 
• 7(Outs): 1 to 4. 
• 8(Outs): 1 to 3.5. 
• 9(Outs): 1 to 3. 
• 10(Outs): 1 to 2.5. 
• 11(Outs): 1 to 2.2. 
• 12(Outs): 1 to 2. 
• 13(Outs): 1 to 1.8. 
• 14(Outs): 1 to 1.6. 
• 15(Outs): 1 to 1.4. 

Now you know that Outs mean the number of cards that may turn the table, so by observing the chart, we know that when you get more outs, the insurance odds get lower. On the contrary, when there are fewer outs remaining, the odds go up as well. So it’s up to the player who’s ahead whether he wishes to deduct part of the pot to purchase the odds or not. You ought to memorize the odds charts so that you may apply them in the future.

Texas Hold’em Insurance | Insurance Application

Now we are going to talk about how we can apply it in our games. The Insurance application doesn’t mean that we have to buy insurance whenever we are ahead. Say there are only 1 or 2 outs that can cause the bad beat since the chances of it happening are low so you can decide not to buy the insurance since if a bad beat doesn’t happen, the dealer will take away your insurance purchase money. So normally players only purchase insurance when the outs are higher than 3.

Conclusion

That’s all for today. The Texas Hold’em Insurance application skill is as we have introduced above. You may apply it to your game and reduce your losses when there’s a potential bad beat you are facing. In order to do so players need to be able to count the outs as well. Thank you all for participating today and I will see you in the next episode. Have a nice day!

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