How to Count Outs in Texas Holdem Poker

Succeeding in Texas Hold’em poker is all about mathematics. All those pros that you see on television are constantly crunching numbers in their heads when they are making a decision to raise, call or fold their hand. The first basic step of starting to use mathematics in poker is to know how to count outs at a quality poker site like Full Tilt.

An out is a card that will improve your hand to become the winning hand. Because you do not know your opponents hand, you are going to have to make a read (an educated guess) on what they are holding when you decide which cards will make yours the winning hand. We are going to go through the basic steps of how to count outs and then briefly look at how you can apply some mathematics to these outs.

What is a Draw?

In Texas Hold’em Poker, a draw is a hand that you must usually improve in order to win the pot.

A draw may have a few or a number of cards that will improve it.

The cards that help a Texas Hold’em hand improve are known as outs.

If the cards or outs in question hit, you will most likely beat your opponent’s hand.

There are a few draws we should concentrate on when trying to count outs because these are the most common ones. These draws are flush draws, straight draws, combination draws (the combination of a flush and a straight draw) and over cards to the board. What we have to do when we count our outs is count the amount of cards that will complete our hand. For instance, if we have a flush draw there are 4 of the same suit cards on the board and in your hand. Because there are 13 of each suit in the deck, this means there are 9 more suited cards that could come out of the deck that would make our flush. Thus, we have 9 outs that count towards making our flush hand.

Important outs to remember

A flush draw has 9 outs.

A straight draw has 8 outs.

A combination draw has 15 outs.

One over card has 3 outs.

Two over cards has 6 outs.

The outs above are common outs that you should be able to recall quickly when you are in a hand. To use them mathematically is easy. If the flop comes down and we have a flush draw which (9 outs), there are 9 cards out of 47 unknown cards to hit on the turn and 9 cards out of 46 to hit on the river. This means the percentage likelihood of us hitting our outs if we see both the turn and the river is 39% this is done by adding 9/47 to 9/46.

Additional Basic Texas Holdem Instructions

How to play holdem
Pot Odds
Texas Hold’em bankroll guide

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