Fold Equity: The Folds You Need, Given Your Hand's Equity
Fold equity is the part of a bet's value that comes from the times your opponent folds. A bluff with no equity wins only through it: a 30bb shove into a 10bb pot has to win 75% of the time. A draw that also wins when called needs far fewer: with 39.8% equity when called, the same shove needs only 17.6% folds.
The price from the other side
The player facing the shove compares their equity with the price of the call. Enter the pot and the bet (for the example below: pot 10, bet 30):
A flop shove with a draw
8♥7♥ on K♥ 9♥ 2♣ against A♠K♦, 10bb pot, 30bb shove. If the shove is called, the final pot is 70bb.
| When you shove | 8♥7♥'s equity when called | Folds needed |
|---|---|---|
| Flop K♥ 9♥ 2♣ | 39.8% | 17.6% |
| Turn 5♠ (flop checked through) | 27.3% | 52.2% |
| With no equity at all | 0% | 75% |
Folds needed = (bet − equity × final pot) / (pot + bet − equity × final pot). With two cards to come, the draw wins often enough when called that few folds are needed; on the turn, with one card left, it needs more than half.
Keep going
- The price of a pure bluff: how often a bluff must work.
- A draw's equity at a glance: the rule of 2 and 4.
- The cards that improve a draw: poker outs.
- Computing the expected value: expected value in poker.
- Bluffing more against someone who folds too much: exploitative poker.
- One spot every day: the daily poker puzzle.
- The name for a draw that bets: the semi-bluff.
- The amount a shove really puts at stake: the effective stack.
Sources
- Every equity is computed by exact enumeration with the app's equity module, and every frequency with its pot odds module, checked on October 11, 2026.