Poker Lesson 5: Outs

This article is all about outs. In poker, an out is a card that will give us the winning hand. If we have eight cards that improve our hand to a winner, we have eight outs. By knowing our outs we can accurately calculate the percentage of winning a specific hand, which is a useful skill, to say the least.

The first part of understanding outs is to identify our outs. Most often, at least in the beginning, we will be faced with this problem when having a straight draw or a flush draw. Let us assume that our hole cards are 98, and that the flop has come K76. We have what is known as an open-ended straight draw, or OESD for short. A five or a ten would make a straight for us.

Since poker is a card game played with a standard deck of 52 cards, there are four fives and four tens in the deck. Well then, how many outs do we have? As mentioned in the beginning of this article, an out is a card that will improve our hand to a winner. We will most likely need to make our straight to win the pot, meaning that we have eight outs in this situation. This is one of the most common drawing hands, so it is worthwhile to remember that en OESD equals eight outs.

Another common draw is the flush draw. If we hold two cards of the same suit and the flop comes with two cards of that suit we have a flush draw. There are thirteen cards of each suit and we hold two in our hand. There are another two on the board, leaving nine cards that give us a flush. By applying some simple logic, this means that we have nine outs.

There are more powerful draws, the so called combination draws. An open ended straight draw combined with a flush draw gives us 15 outs (9 cards give us a flush, six non-flush cards give us a straight), making it an extremely powerful hand. JT on a K87 board with two of our suit gives us 12 outs (9 flush cards, three non-flush straight cards).

There is also a draw known as the gutshot straight draw. It is a draw that should be folded and that we should not call any bets with. For example, if we hold 76 and the flop comes 952, we have four outs – the four eights. This is, as mentioned, a lousy draw.

So, why does all this talk of outs matter?

Well, it is the simplest way of doing a relatively accurate approximation of our chances of winning a hand. By multiplying the number of outs with two we get the probability of our hand improving on the next street and by multiplying the number of outs with four we get the chance of our hand improving by the river. If we have an OESD, there is a 16% chance of us making our straight by the turn, and a 32% chance of us making the straight by the river. With a flush draw, the percentages are slightly higher (18% by turn, 36% by river).

By knowing and calculating our percentages, we get a good understanding of how different hands match up to each other. It shows, for example, why flopping a set with a pocket pair is so powerful. Let us assume we hold 88 and the flop comes J82. Let us assume our opponent holds pocket aces. There are two aces remaining in the deck, giving our opponent two outs – or a chance of winning the hand of only 8%!

Outs and percentages also play an important role when it comes to pot odds and implied odds and when deciding on whether we should continue to play with a drawing hand if someone else bets. More on this in the next article!