Poker Jesus Home | Poker Room Reviews | Poker Bonus Codes | Poker Strategy Articles              

Welcome To Poker Jesus Online

          Poker Chips
Chip Reviews
Chip Care

                  WSOP
WSOP News
How To Qualify For The WSOP
History Of The WSOP

    Poker Room Reviews
1.  Bodog Poker Review
2.  Party Poker Review
3.  Absolute Poker Review
4.  Pokerroom Review
5.  Poker.com Review
6.  Full Tilt Poker Review
7.  Paradise Poker Review
8.  Royal Vegas Poker Review
9.  Noble Poker Review
10.  Pacific Poker Review

               Misc Stuff
Online Poker Room Reviews
Recommended Poker Books
Poker Software Reviews
Poker Office Review
History Of Poker
Poker Dictionary
Free Stuff
Current Poker Bonus Codes
Party Poker Sign Up Bonus Codes
Poker Sites That Accept Phone Cards For Deposit
Party Poker Strategy Guide

Finding Your Outs

Finding your outs simply means, discovering which remaining cards in the deck can potentially improve your hand to best hand.  Once you’ve found your outs and know whether or not it’s profitable for you to stay in a hand, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to win the pot.  If you’re drawing to a straight, and you achieve it, you could still lose to a higher straight, flush, etc… I say this to emphasize the fact that you need to always speculate as to what hands other players might have and what they might be drawing to.  Knowing your outs and your pot odds are great tools, but taken alone they don’t guarantee that you’ll be a winning poker player.  You need to learn how to read the board and to at least have some inkling as to what other players are trying for.  Often times the signs are there on the board, telling you that you’re already beat. It can be easy to ignore them.  I’ve been guilty of that myself. 

Finding your outs is actually quite simple.  It can be overwhelming when you first attempt to actually apply what you’ve learned in a game.  Finding your outs, discounting some of those outs, finding your draw odds, figuring out your pot odds, then taking into consideration implied pot odds, and then finally coming to a conclusion as to whether you should stay in a hand sounds like a lot of work doesn't it?  I assure you it’s not as difficult as it sounds.  You’ll soon be able to do that simply by glancing at the board.  In practice the most common draws you’ll be calculating are with overcards and some combination of straight/flush draws.  Rarely are you going to be looking at the odds of drawing to a set or a lone back door flush or straight draw because in most cases, unless the pot is insanely huge you’re just going to fold those draws.  After you’ve learned to find your outs, and apply your draw odds to the pot odds, it will often simply be a matter of checking your cards and glancing at the board, at which time you’ll intuitively know whether you have the odds to stay in the hand.  Most draws you'll calculate are so common, and show up so often, that you’ll basically end up memorizing the most common scenarios you’ll encounter.  After dealing with the same situations over and over again, it becomes second nature.

To find your outs, after the flop you need to determine which hands you can draw to that will most likely give you the best hand.  Sometimes that would be top pair, sometimes it would have to be much much better, for instance if the flop is three of the same suit.  In that case you would only stay in the hand if you hold one of the two remaining highest cards left in that suit.  Remember there are 52 cards in the deck and 13 cards of each suit.  The most common draws you’ll be looking at are combinations of overcards, flush, and straight draws.  So if you’re dealt AK and the flop is 9 5 3, you have two overcards and a backdoor nut flush draw.  The board is not dangerous, slim chances of a straight draw being out there, flush draws are not dangerous, and the board isn’t paired (two of the same cards on the board).  Your two overcards have 6 outs to them (as you become more advanced you’ll learn to value overcards differently based on how the board looks.  Some people would value AK with this flop as 1.5 outs each, and with a different flop they’d weight them lower, but for now take them at face value).  How do we know this?  Because there are 3 remaining aces, and 3 remaining kings in the deck that can help us.  You also have a backdoor flush draw.  Normally you wouldn’t even take this into consideration, but because you have this in combination with two strong overcards, you add an extra 1.5 outs for the backdoor flush draw.  Write the following down somewhere, or better yet, memorize it.  In more cases, a backdoor flush draw is worth 1.5 outs, a backdoor straight draw with no gaps (345) is also worth 1.5 outs.  It’s not much but sometimes you’ll get combinations where those extra 1.5 outs will make the difference between folding, and continuing.  So you’re combined outs for your AK are (7.5), 6 outs for the overcards, 1.5 outs for the backdoor flush draw.  You’re going to look up 7.5 outs on the poker draw odds chart which would put your odds of improving at 5.5 to 1.  So one time out of 6.5 times you’re going to improve your hand.  If the pot odds are larger than 5.5 you’re going to stay in the hand. 

[Home] [Next]