How to Count Outs in Texas Holdem Poker

Most profitable poker players are excellent at mathematics, but that doesn’t mean that you need to be a genius in order to use math at the poker tables. In fact, after you read through this article you’ll know exactly how to count your possible outs in a hand and why it’s important to count your outs while playing poker. The math formulas used below are simple, but if you want to make things easier you can purchase a Texas Holdem poker calculator.

How to Count Outs in a Texas Holdem hand

First off, we need to define what an “Out” is in Texas Holdem. An out is any card that can potentially make you the best hand. Calculating your outs isn’t an exact science, as you never know what your opponent has. You may think that you have a few outs to hit in a hand, but in reality you don’t even have a chance to win the hand. This will happen from time to time, but on average counting your outs will help you find out if you’re making the optimal play in any given hand.

In most Texas Holdem hands you’re not going to have a made hand after the flop although you may have some outs to make the best hand. Let’s take a look at an example of how to count outs in Holdem. If you have an A/K of Hearts dealt to you and the flop is J/8/4 with two hearts you have a nut flush draw and plenty of outs. There are 13 hearts in a deck of cards and we already know that 4 have been exposed, which means you still have a total of 9 hearts in the remaining deck. You could also count 6 more outs due to the fact you have two over cards, but if you do this you’ll call a lot more hands when you really should be folding, as the likelihood of your opponent not being able to beat your single pair in a bet pot is slim.

Once you’ve counted your outs you can use that information to quickly find out how to optimally play the rest of the hand. For instance, once you have the number of outs you have, which in the example above is 9, you’ll be able to count your card odds and pot odds. To calculate card odds you simply subtract the number of unexposed cards by the number of outs you have and than divide by the number of outs you have.

Formula for counting outs in holdem

If we used the example above the formula you need to use to calculate card odds would be 47 (Unexposed Cards) – 9 (Outs) / 9 (Outs), which would give you card odds of roughly 4:1 when rounded down. Now that you know your card odds you can use this information to quickly find out your pot odds.

The formula to calculate pot odds is really simple; all you do is add the current pot and your opponent’s bet together than divide by the amount you need to call the pot. For instance, the pot is $20 and your opponent bets $4 ($20 + $4 = $24), which you than divide by the amount you need to call ($4), which equals 6. This means that you’re getting 6:1 pot odds to make the call. In the example we’ve been using you have a 4:1 chance to hit your flush draw, which means at 6:1 pot odds you should make the call and try to hit your flush.