How To Estimate Poker Odds
24 June 2008How To Estimate Poker Odds
When you are playing poker, it is very important to have a good idea of your odds of winning a certain hand. Knowing the odds will help you know if you should call, raise or fold when a bet comes to you. Since you aren’t likely to have a calculator at the table, and you won’t have time to do the mental divisions necessary to get an exact answer, you need a good method of estimating the odds.
Rule of 4 – Or 2 + 2
There is an extremely easy way of estimating your odds of winning a Texas holdem hand. After the flop, count the number of outs you have to win the hand. For instance, if you have a flush draw, there are 9 remaining cards in the deck that will give you a flush. Multiply your 9 outs by 4 to give you 36, and you have a 36 % chance of hitting the flush and winning the hand.
To Easy you say?
There is a good reason that it works. After the flop you see the two cards in you hand and the 3 on the table, so there are 47 cards unknown to you. So the odds that a given card will come next are
1 / 47 = 2.1 %
After the turn there are 46 unknown cards, so the odds that one of them will come next is
1 / 46 = 2.2 %
So the odds of any given card coming on the turn or the river are
1/47 + 1/46 or approximately 4 %
How to Best Use The Rule
The rule of 4 works best if you have a clear idea of what will win you the hand and what won’t. If you are drawing to a flush, then you have 9 clean outs and a 36 %, if you are drawing to an open ended straight, you have 8 clean outs and a 32 % chance of winning. The rule works much less well if you are not sure what your outs are. For instance, if you are holding a Jack-10 and the flop comes King 4 5 you don’t know what your outs are. You have 6 outs to a pair, for a 24 % chance, and another 4 % of hitting a back door straight, but you don’t know what will win you the hand. Will pairing your jack or 10 win? Maybe, but maybe someone already has a pair of kings.
The Bottom line
Multiplying your number of outs by 4 is a great method of quickly estimate the odds of hitting your cards by the river. If you are already on the turn, you can multiply your number of outs by 2 to get the estimate of hitting your hand. Knowing how to quickly find your odds is essential to your long term success playing poker, but if you don’t have a good idea of what will win you the hand, knowing the odds of hitting a specific card isn’t very useful.
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