You may have heard, that poker has alot to do with mathematics. So here is a mathematical tool used to find out if a pot has good enough value to continue with your hand or not. It's pretty simple: Just divide the amount in the pot by the amount of the bet in the current bedding round. This provides you idication wheter to continue with your hand or not compared with the percentage chance of you holding the best hand. If pot odds are too low you should not make a long term profit and fold.

In games like Texas Hold'em Poker and Omaha Poker pot odds are most usefull on flop, turn and river because of the community cards. Preflop there are too less information about your opponents hand to make a decicion wheter you are getting good pot odds or not. Wait at least to the flop to try to make this decicion!

In the game you will be either beating or trailing to your opponents hand. If you are trailing you will need to outdraw your opponent in order to win the showdown. To let this be a profitable game you must only accept pot odds which are higher than the chance of you outdrawing your opponents. If you are the beating part, you have to make sure to offer your opponent worse pot odds than his chance to actually outdraw you.