Unless you are a savant or have done
hundreds of hours of poker play,
working out the odds can be a little
tricky to work out for beginners. So here’
s a trick to approximate the odds of
hitting your outs.
- Count the number of outs you have.
- Times the number of outs by the number of chances you have to hit. So on the flop
you get two chances to make your draw (so you times your outs by 2).
- Then times by 2 and add a percentage sign.
So for example, we have Jh Qh and the flop is Ah Kh 2s. You have a gut shot with the
queen and a flush draw. This gives you 12 outs (the 9 hearts plus 10s 10c 10d). The
action brings a raise and you need to start working out the odds. So you times 12 by 2
(because you have two chances, the turn and river), which gives 24. Then we times 24 by
2 and add a percentage sign, which is 48%. So we can approximate that we will make
either the flush or gut shot 48% of the time and would be checking the pot odds to justify
the call.
In fact the precise odds are 43% to making the draw (1- (35/47)*(35/46)). So the
approximation trick isn’t precisely accurate but will get you close enough to make the ball
park figure for you to concentrate on other aspects of what is happening in the hand
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