Outs & Pot Odds

In the game of online poker, an “Out” is any card that will improve your online poker hand. A good poker player always knows exactly how many outs he has to a attain a better hand. In this section, we’ll teach you all about Outs, how to calculate them, and how to use them to determine the Pot Odds.

Pot Odds are another useful tool in any poker strategy, telling a player exactly how much they should wager in any given situation. Simply put, if you have a 20% chance of hitting an out, you should bet 20% of the current pot size. To bet less would be under-betting, to bet more would be over-betting.

The only time you should over-bet is when you are bluffing opponents away from the pot. If they also calculate outs and pot odds, they can be fooled into thinking you have better cards than you really do. Under-betting the pot can be useful when trying to get other players to stay in a pot, especially when you have the nuts. Over-betting is also acceptable when you have the nuts, but only if you think you can keep an opponent tossing chips.

Calculating Outs
Calculating your outs is actually a simple process. Look carefully at the cards you have available, and decide what cards can help you. Let’s try an example, using Texas Hold’em as the poker game.

Example 1: After the flop, you have: Ah-Jh + 4h-Qd-10h

We can see right away that you have 4 Hearts to a Flush, and 4 cards to a Straight (10-J-Q-A). We’ll start with the flush draw. There are 13 Hearts in a deck, and you have 4 of them. That leaves 9 cards that can give you the flush. There are also 4 Kings in the deck that can give you the Straight. That’s 9+4=13 Outs.

You also have the highest card on the board; the Ace. So any other Ace would also be a solid Out, adding 3 more Outs for a total of 16.

Combining Outs & Pot Odds
With 16 Outs, we then add up how many cards are left in the deck. There are 52 in all, and you can see 5 of them. Cards in your opponents’ hands don’t count, since we can’t see them, so the remaining total is 47 (52-5=47). Next, we find what percent is 16 of 47.

To convert 47 to 100%, we use this formula: 100 / 47 = 2.127
This means that every 1 is equal to 2.127%, with 47 equaling 100%.
Now, multiplying 16 by 2.127 we can get the answer.
16 x 2.127 = 34.032

So 16 Outs after the flop gives you about a 34% chance of hitting an Out. That’s about 1 in 3 cards that can improve your hand. How do we use this knowledge to our advantage? By using Pot Odds to make a value bet.

The pot odds are 34%, so a value bet would be about 34% of the current pot size. If there is $100 in the pot, place a $34 bet. You can round that up to $35 so you don’t get funny looks.

By placing a value bet based on pot odds, you are playing the probabilities. If you happen to loose, the risk was worth the loss. If you over-bet the pot, the risk was not worth the loss. If you win, but under-bet the pot, it is a missed opportunity. Value bets are a great way to control your profits.

Knowing What You Have to Beat
This online poker strategy isn’t just about calculating your own outs, but the probable outs of others. For this, you must read only the cards showing on the board. From here, determine what cards your opponents could be holding, and use your knowledge of observation to guess what they actually have.

The easiest way to read your opponents is to practice guessing what they are holding, according to their betting patterns, habits and poker tells, during hands that you are not participating in. If you can accurately predict a player’s situation when you’re sitting out, you should have no trouble taking advantage of this knowledge in hands you are both competing in.

Take note of players who slows play great hands, bluff from late position, become aggressive with top pair or better, folds under pressure with anything but the nuts, etc. These are all important poker tell that can reveal a player’s holdings at a later point in the game.

Once you become accustomed to calculating pot odds when you play online poker, you can determine the strength of another player’s hand by reverse calculating the odds according to his bet size. This takes a lot of practice, but can be very effective against veteran poker players.