Relationship between he amount of money to be immediately won in the pot compared to the amount of money for you to continue in the hand.

OR

A ratio between the value of the pot and the value that must be called to continue.

To make a winning play, the price to continue must be better than the odds against you making your hand. (If you're a 2:1 dog, you need at least 2:1 on your money to break even and better than that to make money in the longterm)


For example ...

Say there's $50 in the pot and someone bets $40 for a total of $90 in the pot.

To continue we would have to call $40 to win $90. The ratio is 2.25:1.

In our example, we have to make a straight to beat someone with an overpair, we have 8 outs.

BUT, we need 4.7:1 odds to make a call, so based on pot odds alone we can't continue. The pot would have to be at least 4.7 x $40, or $188, to make a call.