This poker odds cheat sheet will help you understand poker odds quickly and easily. The two most common and useful ways to use an understanding of poker odds to become a better player are: understanding outs, and understanding pot odds.
How to use outs in poker
When you are trying to improve your hand in a game of poker, any cards that will do so are called 'outs'.
For example, let’s say you have 
as your hole cards in a game of Texas hold’em, and the flop is 
.
As it stands, you don’t even have a pair, but you have a lot of outs that will improve your hand to a straight or a flush:
- Any of these 9 cards will improve your hand to a flush:
- Any of these 6 cards will improve your hand to a straight:
This means that, while you may be losing at the time, there are 15 cards - or ‘outs’ - which will improve your hand if they come on the turn or the river.
The poker rule of 4 and 2
For a quick way to use this knowledge to work out your winning chances, count your outs then:
- Multiply them by 4 if you are on the flop
- Multiply them by 2 if you are on the turn
The resulting number, as a percentage, is your rough probability of hitting one of your outs.
In the example above, your 15 outs give you a 60% chance of making a flush or straight with two cards to come, and a 30% chance with one card to come.
How to use this to work out if it is right to call a bet
Now you know how to work out your odds of improving, you can use knowledge of pot odds to figure out whether it is worth calling a bet.
To do this:
- Take the amount of chips in the pot, add the amount you need to call
- Divide the amount you need to call by this number
- Multiply the result by 100
This gives you a percentage figure.
If that % figure is higher than the % figure you have to improve your hand, it’s generally not a good call; if the figure is lower, it is.
Check our poker odds page for more detail on outs, pot odds and more.
