Texas Holdem odds

Pot odds

Pot odds are what you use to calculate whether a certain play has a positive expected value. It is defined as the relationship between the size of the pot and the bet. For instance, if the pot is $100 and you bet $10, the pot odds are 10 to 1. In order to calculate your pot odds, you must know how many outs your hand has at that moment. For example, if you flop a heart flush draw you then have 9 outs to make your hand. There are 13 hearts in total. You hold 2 and the flop came with 2, which leaves 9 hearts unseen.

If you refer to the table below, you will notice that you have a 35% chance of hitting a hand with 9 outs on the turn and river combined. This is slightly better than 1 in 3 times, which means that if it costs you $10 to win $30 or more, drawing for a flush is the correct move.

A rule of thumb: every out gives you about a 4% chance of hitting on the turn and river combined. For example, 5 outs gives you about a 20% chance of improving, 6 outs about 24%, etc.

Outs for specific draws
Flush draw with two overcards or a straight flush draw 15 outs
Flush draw with one overcard 12 outs
Flush draw 9 outs
Open-ended straight draw 8 outs
Two overcards 6 outs
Gut-shot straight draw 4 outs

Drawing outs from a deck of 47 unseen cards
Number of outs % on Turn % on River
1 2.2 4.3
2 4.3 8.4
3 6.5 12.5
4 8.7 16.5
5 10.9 20.4
6 13.0 24.1
7 15.2 27.8
8 17.4 31.5
9 19.6 35.0
10 21.7 38.4
11 23.9 41.7
12 26.1 45.0
13 28.3 48.1
14 30.4 51.2
15 32.6 54.1
16 34.8 57.0
17 37.0 59.8
18 39.1 62.4
19 41.3 65.0
20 43.5 67.5