Poker town
Outs
Outs are the number of cards that are left to be played that could improve your hand. In other words, outs are the number of cards that you WANT. Obviously, the higher the number of outs there are, the better your chances of getting them. Pretty much the only thing you need to be able to do to understand this most basic set of odds is: divide the number of outs (numerator) by the number of unseen cards in any given game (denominator). When you have the result, shift the decimal point two places forward and you have your odds in the form of a percentage.
There are, however, a few very minor complications. The first of these is that your denominator will either be 50, 47 or 46, depending on the stage of the game. Here you need to remember the word flop, which means the first three cards that are turned over in a game of Texas Hold ’Em. Since Texas Hold ’Em starts with a 50-card deck (minus the two cards you are given, which are called your pocket cards), the pre-flop denominator in calculating your odds will be 50. The post-flop denominator, then, will be 47, once you subtract the cards that have been revealed in the flop. And the denominator changes again to 46 after the turn, or the fourth card that’s revealed. Let’s look at some examples to help clarify this idea.
Example #1:
Question: You’ve got two queens to start, which is quite a nice hand of course, but the flop doesn’t produce another. What are your odds of getting a queen on the turn?
Answer: Your numerator will be 2, since there are two more queens in the deck. Your denominator will be 47, since the flop revealed three cards out of the original 50. Divide 2 by 47, move the decimal place two spots forward, and you’ve got a 4.3% chance of getting that queen on the turn.
Example #2:
Question: What are your odds of getting a queen on the river, or the last card that’s revealed (after the turn)?
Answer: Since the queen didn’t show up on the turn, there are still two in the deck somewhere. That means your numerator will remain 2. The denominator, however, will change to 46, since there’s one less card to be played, after the turn. Divide 2 by 46 and your odds still hover around 4.3%.
Example #3:
Question: What are your odds of getting the third queen on the turn, and the fourth queen on the river?
Answer: Multiply the odds of getting a queen on the turn by the odds of getting the last queen on the river. As we established in Example #1, you’ve got about a 4.3% chance of getting a queen on the turn. Convert that back to 0.043. Now figure out the chances of getting the final queen on the river. The numerator changes to 1, since there’s only one queen left, and the denominator remains 46, as in Example #2, since we’re up to the river. Your odds are about 2.2%. Now convert that to 0.022, and then multiply it by 0.043. Your final answer is 0.0009, or about 0.09% after you move the decimal point two spaces forward. These are not very good odds.
Note: It’s crucial to convert your odds back to their original, non-percentage form when you multiply them. If you keep them as a percentage, your final answer for Example #3 would be about 9.5%, which is clearly a LOT different from 0.09%.
