Time to show my ignorance what it "Fold Equity"?

[jdog1999]

I see this posted all the time but I cannot get my head around what it means.

[Lloyd]

FAQ #22. Feel free to ask further questions here.

[Foucault]

There are two ways you make money in poker: when worse hands call you getting incorrect odds and when better hands or drawing hands fold getting proper odds to call. Fold equity is the portion of your expected profit on a give play that comes from people folding incorrectly.

Actually, I don't think the folds have to be incorrect. If you are a 90% favorite to win a pot, you bet, and Villain correctly folds, your equity increases by 10% to 100%.

Make sense?

[JJGD83]

Fold Equity is leverage that you hold over a player in a pot with you that is directly correlated to the number of chips you have in relationship to him/her. If you both have even stacks and you go all-in, you have a lot of FE because he needs a good hand in order to call. However, if you go all-in with 170 chips and he has 2000, you have next to 0 FE because he will probably call with nearly anything. This usualyl comes into play later on in tournaments when your stack gets low relative to the blinds. Once your M dips into the Red Zone (see HOHE2), your fold equity will decrease along with it, this is why you want to make your move early, so you can still force people to fold marginal hands and pick up the blinds.

[locutus2002]

[ QUOTE ]


22. What is Folding Equity (FE)?
The potential that a bet/raise will cause all other players to fold and thus claim the pot and end the action. For instance, the folding equity of a pre-flop open push is contingent mainly on position and on the size of your stack (earlier postion and/or a smaller stack means lower FE).

The STT FAQ contains the following formula:
(Percentage of times all remaining opponents will fold to your bet)*(total chips you stand to gain when they do all fold)



[/ QUOTE ]


The description in the FAQ isn't that useful.
I have seen the term used in two different ways, which are different.


1) FE is the ability to make another player fold when they have the best hand.
2) FE is the ability to make another player fold when they have equity in the pot.

Your FE in a situation is a subjective judgement evaluation and can be affected by:
Stack size
pot odds
Image
Payout structure
The play in the hand so far
Prior history
Flop texture, etc
many other factors.

FE is an important concept because it is useful to think about which possible hands another player will be willing to fold in a particular situation.