Dec
12
To play winning poker, you have to know what your outs are, and what your odds of hitting each out is. So what is an out?
In poker, an “out” is any card that can come that will improve your hand. Lets take the following example of a hand in Texas Hold’Em.
Lets say you hold a 5 of spades, and a 6 of spades.
The board is Q of hearts, 4 of clubs, 7 of diamonds, K of spades.
In this hand, you have 14 total outs. That is to say, there are 14 possible cards that can come and help you improve your hand. What are they? Well, right now you only hold a 6 high hand. So, any 5 or 6 will give you a pair, and any 4 or 8 will give you a straight.
Since there are three 5’s in the deck, three 6’s in the deck, four 4’s in the deck, and four 8’s in the deck, there are 14 possible ways to improve your hand. Therefore, we say you would have a total of 14 outs.
But, as we can see, getting a pair of 5’s or a pair of 6’s with a Q, K, and a 7 on the board probably won’t help us much. Anyone with a higher pair than a 5 or a 6 will win, and it is likely that if there has been betting on the flop or the river, someone probably has at least a pair of Queens or better.
So a 5 or 6 won’t be of much benefit because it is beaten by so many possible hands. But, if a 4 or an 8 falls, we have the stone cold nuts…the best hand possible. Since there are four 4’s and four 8’s unaccounted for, we assume they are in the deck.
Because we are guaranteed to win the pot (or at least split it) if a 4 or 8 fall, we will consider these true outs. In other words, outs that will probably improve our hand to a winning hand.
So, and out is a card that can come that will improve out hand to a probable winning hand. Remember, unless it is to the nuts, it isn’t a guaranteed win. However, as long as it is a probable winning hand, we will count it as an out.
If we are truly unsure as to whether a possible out will make the best hand, we assign a fraction value to it.
For example, say you hold an Ace of spades, and a King of Spades. The flop is Queen of hearts, 8 of clubs, 4 of diamonds. In this case, if an Ace or a King falls, we may have the best hand, but we might still be behind two pair, or trips. So, instead of six total outs, this should be looked three true outs.
In other words, we know that we may well have the best hand if a K or A falls, but we also may not. So, we assign a fraction value to our outs. Half an out each for a K or A, so a total of three outs.
So, now that we know basically how to calculate outs, we need to know what the odds are for hitting each out.
In No Limit Texas Hold’em, there is a very simple rule to calculate the odds of hitting our needed outs.
Simply take the number of true outs, and multiply it by two. This is the odds of hitting what we need by the next card. If we have both a turn and river card to come, we multiply by 4, and this is the percentage chance we have of hitting our out by the river.
So, if we hold a 5 of spades, and a 7 of spades. The flop is Ace of hearts, 6 of diamonds, 4 of spades, then we have 8 outs to the nut straight. This means we have a 16% chance to hit our straight by the turn, and a 32% chance to hit it by the river. 8 outs x 2 = 16% by the turn. 8 outs x 4 = 32% by the river.
By multiplying your outs by two for each card to come, you can determine your percentage chance to hit your outs.
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December 12, 2007
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