Poker School - Lesson 3 | Odds

What are odds and how do we use them?

There are two main odds that a poker player needs to understand and use regularly. Those are pot odds and implied odds. In this lesson I will show you how to calculate your odds and how to use those odds to make good decisions at the table.

Before we can talk about the odds though, we need to talk about outs. Out is a card that makes your hand a winner if it's not yet the best hand, for example when you're drawing to a straight or a flush. Counting outs is a critical skill that you need to develop before you can start playing poker profitably. The good thing about outs is that on the basic level, counting them is easy. Let's look at some examples of counting outs.

Your hand : 8d7d

Board : Ks6h5c

You have an open-ended straight draw, any 4 or 9 will give you the best hand (nuts). Those 8 cards are your full outs because they will give you the nuts. Any 8 or 7 will give you a pair, which would be the best hand if nobody has a pair higher than that, which is pretty unlikely if there's any kind of betting happening. If I would have this hand in a regular game and there were a bet and a call I would only count 4's and 9's as outs.

Your hand : AsKs

Board : Ts7s2d

You have a nut-flush draw, and any spade will give you the flush. The two of spades would put a pair on the board enabling a full house, but if there's not really heavy betting on the flop (that could be a sign of someone having a set or some strange two pair) I wouldn't really worry about it. You also have two strong overcards that, if they hit on the turn, will give you a probable best hand (and you would still have your flush draw). The flush draw has nine outs and the overcards should be counted as a half of an out each, giving us 3 outs, and that makes it 12 outs total.

So, what are these numbers for? We can calculate our chances of improving on the next card to come, which is something very important to know when playing poker. If we have 8 outs, the chances of improving is 8/47 which equals to about 17% or approximately once every six times. 12 outs makes that 12/47~25,5% which is about one time in four. These calculations are made by dividing the number of outs with the number of unknown cards left, as we know our two hole cards and three community cards on the board, that leaves us 47 unknown cards. If you want to count these numbers when you're at the turn, divide with 46 instead.