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. Head to our Beginners Hub for even more useful poker tips.
