A 'Dog' or 'Underdog'

A 'dog' or 'underdog' is a player who is statistically not the favorite to win the hand. A hand in poker is much like many other competitive games - there's a favorite and an underdog, who is expected to lose. The same would be true in a football match or a game of rugby, although in many sports, the probability of winning is a little more subjective.

For instance, let's, for the sake of argument, we are in a game of Holdem - you hold AA and your opponent KK. Before we see any of the community cards you are a clear favorite to win against the Kings. If your opponent doesn't hit a king, you win the hand. Catching one of the last two remaining Kings in the deck would only happen around 18% of the time with the aces holding up over 80%!

In every hand that is played on the poker table, after the first two hole cards, you can calculate as a percentage and how likely you are to win the hand. This can be done on each street. It's this percentage that's used to understand who the underdog is in any given point in the hand. Here, you can read more about calculating odds in poker. Alternatively, you can use our calculator to see where you stand in a given hand.

 
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