A Quick Way To Calculate Your “Odds” and “Outs”

Poker is all about probabilities. If you want to become a successful poker player and by that, I mean a player that consistently makes money, then you need to understand probabilities.

Now I have a minor in statistics but even I find the whole idea of poker probabilties to be confusing to say the least. But there are some tricks that we can use to make it easier. Here is a way to calculate approximate probabilities.

So let’s say that the flop comes and you have a couple of diamonds and there are two more diamonds in the community cards. Altogether you have four diamonds and you need one more to make a flush. So what are your real chances of making a flush?

First of all you need to work out how many “outs” you have. Outs are the number of ways that you can make a flush. Clearly you can do this if you get another diamond card. And because you already have 4 of them then there are only 9 left (13-4=9).

Then the formula to work out the approximate odds of hitting a flush are:

ODDS = OUTS X CHANCES x 2

Because the turn and the river are still to come then you have 2 more chances to get another card and make a flush.

So let’s calculate the odds:

ODDS = 9 x 2 x 2 = 36%

So you have roughly a 36% chance of hitting a flush.

This might sound difficult but with practice you can easily work out many approximate odds on the fly.

Alternatively, you can use a poker calculator which will work these odds and outs for you on the fly. They are very useful and work with most of the popular poker rooms. The disadvantage with them is that they are obviously useless if you want to play regular offline poker.