Count Your “Outs”
You are going to hear a lot of talk at the poker table about “outs”. This term refers to the number of cards that will make your hand. The most common examples are outs to a flush or straight. For example, you have two diamonds in your hand and two more come on the flop, so you have four of the thirteen diamonds, which leaves nine diamonds to make your flush. Or you have nine outs to the flush.
Straights come in a couple of “out” possibilities. Let’s say you hold QJ and the flop has a King and a Ten; you have an open-end straight draw, either of four Aces or four Nines will make your straight. You have eight outs to your straight. If you hold QJ and the flop is 984 then you have the inside straight draw to the ten and you have only four outs.
Players will calculate their outs in order to decide on pot odds. So if you have 9 outs and there is 47 cards you do not know about in the deck (52-2 in your hand -3 in the flop) then you are about 1 to 5 to hit your draw, if the pot gives you better odds than that you might want to make the call; worse odds and mathematically you should fold.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #136
