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Your Fold Equity:

The fold equity of a bet is essentially the gain in raiser’s expected post-raise fractional pot take, resulting from the likelihood that one or more of the opponents fold to the bet.

Technically, 'fold equity' is the equity a player has from the 'fold' scenario of the three outcomes of a given bet - your opponent folds and you win, he calls and you win, or he calls and you lose.

Your fold equity would come into play if you are going to make a stop and go play first in post shove. If you have no fold equity after making the call and trying to shove the flop, it's a bad play to make, instead, make the push preflop as an example. In this particular aggressive play fold equity is important if you are making a call against a late position raise preflop with the sole intention of shoving the flop no matter what in a stop and go mauever where you plan to take control and be the aggressor post flop. If you are not first in post flop or do not plan to shove, then fold equity is not going to be of any help at all.

Pot odds can be used to determine fold equity while implied odds would be use to determine other plays such as set mining viability. The FE equation goes like this:

Fold Equity = Likelihood opponent(s) fold x Gain in equity if opponent(s) fold.
 
Example
You have A7. You are HU in hand with villain making the preflop call. Villain holds 22. The flop is 9J3 Rainbow.
Say you have pot equity of 31.5%
They have pot equity of 68.5%

(For sake of this example, if there was no more betting and you just turned them face up dealing out the turn and river. Your holding is going to win roughly 31.5% of the time.)

Based on your read (villain stats and how you determine they will react), IF the villain is 70% likely to fold against your pot-size bet or your shove, then your fold equity is 70% times 68.5%, or 48.2925%.

Therefore you can consider that your hand equity if you bet will equal 31.5% + 48.2925% = 79.7925%.

Bascially, in this example you have basically no fold equity. Because you need them to fold roughly 80% of the time for this to be a plus EV situation but you know they will only fold 70% of the time. This is because you cannot win by them folding often enough long term for it to balance out.

There are other formulas that are more involved but what it boils down to really is how often you think you can make them fold by betting/pushing.

You can also look at what will the pot be if you shove? What are THEIR odds to make the call? The shorter your stack, the better the pot odds for them to make the call and the wider they can make that call up to and including ATC (any two cards). People often forget that part, all you see is "damn! I shoved all in and that donk called me with J3clubs! You weren't looking at their stack size in relation to yours, your stack size in relation to the pot and if you put it all in, how much is it for them to call? Also, what is the likely hood of them calling no matter the odds? You don't bluff a calling station because you have no fold equity even if you have them stacked, point is, they won't fold.

There are dozens of other online resources concerning Fold Equity, what it is, how to use it, etc...  This is a great summary and outline for a basic understanding.  Don't be afraid to research it more and study it further!

A GREAT calculator that can help you track your pot odds, hand EV, win odds and is allowed at all poker rooms is Tournament Indicator.  I use it all the time and it helps me keep track of my M as well as my opponents M and what they are doing in the game.  All the stats are right there at the table to help you figure things out and make better decisions.  Click the banner below to download a free trial copy!

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