Poker outs: how to count them and what they’re worth

An out is any unseen card that turns your hand into the best hand. Count them, and you know your chances: a flush draw has 9 outs, which comes in 35% of the time by the river with two cards to come and about 19.6% with one. Poker outs are the bridge between the cards in front of you and the decision to call, raise or fold.

The counting itself is quick. The hard part is knowing which outs are real: a card that completes your flush can still lose to a full house, and a card in your opponent’s hand isn’t in the deck at all. This guide covers both, with exact numbers worked out for every example.

What counts as an out

An out has to do one thing: make your hand better than your opponent’s. A card that only improves your hand, say by giving you a second pair that still loses, isn’t an out.

You count outs against the cards you can’t see. On the flop you know five cards, your two and the three on the board, so 47 are unseen. On the turn you know six, so 46 are left. The cards in other players’ hands and the burned cards are part of those 47; you don’t know what they are, so they count as unseen.

From there the chances follow directly:

• Hitting on the next card: outs ÷ 47 on the flop, outs ÷ 46 on the turn.
• Hitting by the river from the flop: 1 − (47 − outs)/47 × (46 − outs)/46. In words: work out the chance of missing twice, and take it away from 1.

With 9 outs on the flop, you miss the turn 38 times in 47 and then miss the river 37 times in 46. That’s a 65% chance of missing both, so the draw gets there 35% of the time.

Outs for common draws

Most draws you’ll meet come with a standard number of outs. These are the clean counts, before anything in your opponent’s hand or on the board takes some away:

• Gutshot (inside straight draw): 4 outs. 7♠ 6♦ on 9♣ 5♥ 2♠ needs one of the four eights. See our guide to the gutshot.
• Two overcards: 6 outs. A♦ K♣ on 9♠ 6♥ 2♦ against a single pair below kings: three aces and three kings, if pairing one is enough to win.
• Open-ended straight draw: 8 outs. 9♥ 8♥ on T♣ 7♦ 2♠ makes a straight with any jack or six. More in our straight draw guide.
• Flush draw: 9 outs. Thirteen cards of a suit, minus the four you can see. Our flush draw guide covers how to play it.
• Flush draw plus gutshot: 12 outs.
• Flush draw plus open-ender: 15 outs.

Combination draws are where players most often count too many. The rule is to count each card once, even if it completes two draws.

Take J♠ T♠ on Q♠ 9♦ 3♠. You have nine spades for a flush. For the straight you need an eight or a king, eight cards, but the 8♠ and K♠ are already among your spades. So the straight adds six new cards, not eight, and the total is 15 outs, not 17.

Count every card once. With a flush draw and a straight draw together, the two cards that complete both draws belong to the flush count already, which is why 9 + 8 gives 15 outs and not 17.

Poker outs chart

The table gives the chance of hitting for every count from 1 to 21 outs, worked out exactly. The middle column is for one card, from the flop to the turn; the third is the turn-to-river card; the last column is from the flop with both cards to come, with the odds against in brackets until the draw becomes the favourite.

From 14 outs up, the draw is the favourite with two cards to come. It’s why a big combination draw on the flop is often happy to get all the money in against a single pair.

The second and third columns are nearly identical: one card is one card, whether it comes on the turn or the river. What changes the picture is how many cards you get to see for one price, which the next section is about.

The rule of 2 and 4, and when it lies

At the table nobody divides by 47. The usual shortcut is the rule of 2 and 4: multiply your outs by 4 on the flop when you’ll see both remaining cards, and by 2 when you’ll see just one.

For small draws it’s very close. A gutshot gives 16% against the exact 16.5%, an open-ender 32% against 31.5%. The trouble starts above 8 outs, where the rule runs ahead of the exact number: 15 outs gives 60% against the exact 54.1%, and 21 outs gives 84% against 69.9%.

A simple fix keeps the shortcut honest. Above 8 outs, multiply by 4 and then subtract the number of outs over 8:

• 12 outs: 48 − 4 = 44% (exact 45.0%)
• 15 outs: 60 − 7 = 53% (exact 54.1%)
• 21 outs: 84 − 13 = 71% (exact 69.9%)

The chart shows how far the plain rule drifts and how closely the corrected version follows the exact chance.

The rule of 2 errs the other way, slightly low: 9 outs × 2 = 18% against 19.6% on the turn, 15 × 2 = 30% against 32.6%. Adding one or two points covers it.

Use ×4 only when you’re certain to see both cards, which in practice means you’re all in on the flop. If you call a flop bet and face another bet on the turn, you’re paying for one card at a time, and ×2 is the number to compare with your price.

Clean outs, dirty outs and dead outs

The counts above assume every out wins. Often some don’t. A clean out wins the hand for sure; a dirty out improves you but also improves your opponent, sometimes to a better hand; a dead out can’t help because it’s already gone or because your opponent is ahead even after it lands. The examples below show each type with both hands face up and the equity worked out over every possible turn and river.

A combination draw against a set

Start with the 15-outer from earlier. With J♠ T♠ on Q♠ 9♦ 3♠ against A♣ Q♦, top pair, all 15 outs are clean: any spade, any eight or any king gives you the best hand, and your equity is 56.8%.

Now put a set of threes in front of you on the same flop.

Two things change. The 9♠ is no longer an out: it gives you the flush but pairs the board, so the threes make a full house. That leaves 14 cards that put you ahead on the turn. And even when you hit, you’re not safe, because any card that pairs the board on the river still gives the set a full house. Your equity falls from 56.8% to 40.3%, which is what a much smaller draw would be worth.

That’s the typical cost of drawing against a set: the cards you need don’t change, but each one is worth less.

A flush draw against a set on a two-flush board

The second example is a nut flush draw that looks like nine outs and plays like fewer.

You hold A♥ 5♥ on K♥ 8♥ 2♣ against K♣ K♦. Nine hearts are left in the deck, but one of them, the 2♥, pairs the board and gives the kings a full house. So you have 8 outs, and the chart says 31.5%.

The exact figure is lower still: 25.6%. If your flush comes on the turn, the river can still pair the board, which gives the set a full house or four of a kind. Against a set, a flush draw is closer to six clean outs than to nine.

Overcards: outs only against the right hand

Overcards are the most conditional outs of all, because they only count if pairing one is enough. Here’s the same kind of hand against two different opponents.

With K♠ Q♦ on J♣ 7♦ 2♠ against A♣ J♥, top pair with an ace kicker, any king or queen gives you a better pair: three kings and three queens, 6 outs. Your equity is 24.9%, a touch above the 24.1% in the chart thanks to a few runner-runner straights.

Change the opponent’s hand to J♣ J♥ on a J♦ 7♣ 2♠ flop and the same six cards are worth nothing: a king or queen gives you a pair against a set. You have no outs at all, only the runner-runner straight, and your equity is 3.2%. Before you count overcards, ask what your opponent’s bet usually means.

Blockers: when the out is in your opponent’s hand

Some outs are dead before the turn is dealt, because your opponent holds them.

Go back to J♠ T♠ on Q♠ 9♦ 3♠, but give the opponent A♠ Q♣ instead of A♣ Q♦. The ace of spades is in his hand, so only eight spades are left in the deck. You have 14 outs, not 15, and your equity drops from 56.8% to 51.5%. You never see this card, of course, but some hands make it more likely: a player who keeps betting on a three-spade flop often has one big spade. Our guide to blockers covers the logic in both directions.

When the action suggests a strong hand, discount your outs before you call. A rough habit: drop any out that pairs the board against a likely set, and knock one or two off a flush draw against a player who would only bet this hard with a big card of your suit.

Backdoor draws

A backdoor draw needs both the turn and the river: three cards to a flush on the flop, or three to a straight. They’re worth less than a single out but more than nothing, and they’re the reason some flop calls are closer than they look.

• Backdoor flush: with three of a suit after the flop, the chance of two more by the river is 4.2%, about the value of one out.
• Backdoor straight: 9♣ 8♦ on T♠ 3♥ 2♣ has three ways to finish it (J-Q, J-7 and 7-6), which together come in 4.4% of the time.

A common shortcut is to count a backdoor flush or a backdoor straight as roughly one extra out. Two backdoor draws together are worth about two. Our guide to the backdoor draw shows when they turn a fold into a call.

Outs in multiway pots

With more players in the pot, three things work against your outs. More of them are dead, because they’re in someone’s hand. More of them are dirty, because the card that helps you can help a third player more. And you need a stronger hand to win, so outs that would win heads-up, like a pair from your overcards, often don’t.

Here’s what one extra player does to the draw from earlier. J♠ T♠ on Q♠ 9♦ 3♠ against A♣ Q♦ alone has 15 outs and 56.8%. Add a third player with K♥ K♣ and two of your straight cards are in his hand: you’re down to 13 outs, and your share falls to 49.8%. Against A♣ Q♦ and a set of nines, 9♣ 9♥, it’s 42.7%, because every card that pairs the board now gives the nines a full house.

The flip side is the price. In a three-way pot you get more money for each call, so a draw with fewer real outs can still be worth chasing.

From outs to a call

Outs only matter when you compare them with the price. The comparison has two steps: turn your outs into a chance of hitting, and turn the bet into the chance you need.

A simple turn spot shows both steps. The pot is $20 and your opponent bets $10. You’d call $10 to win $30, so you need to win more than a quarter of the time: $10 ÷ ($30 + $10) = 25%. With a flush draw on the turn you hit 19.6% of the time, below the 25% you need, so the call loses money on its own.

It can still be right if you’ll win more when you hit: a bigger bet you can collect on the river makes up the difference. This is the idea behind implied odds, and our guide to pot odds works through it with a table of prices for every bet size. To see how outs feed into your share of the pot over a whole hand, see equity in poker and EV in poker.

All in on the flop is easier, because you see both cards. The same flush draw has 35%, so a call that needs 33% or less is profitable even with no money to come.

Outs in Omaha

The counting works the same way in Pot-Limit Omaha, with two differences. You hold four cards, so on the flop 45 cards are unseen, not 47, and 44 on the turn. And you must use exactly two of your hole cards, which changes what a card actually does for you.

Draws in Omaha get much bigger. A wrap, a straight draw that uses three or four of your cards, can have 13, 17 or 20 outs; with 20 outs from the flop you get there 69.7% of the time. But more outs are dirty: other players also hold four cards, so the card that makes your straight often makes someone a flush or a full house, and many Omaha draws end up drawing to a hand that isn’t the best. Our guide to the wrap in Omaha counts every form of wrap with its nut outs.

For a quick read of which cards are likely to be live on a given flop, see our guide to reading the board.

Poker outs FAQ