Texas Holdem Poker - Holdem Poker Game

What is an out?

In this example, you know 6 cards before the River card is dealt, 2 cards in your hand and 4 on the board. Since there are 52 cards in a deck, this means you do not know the other 46 cards. If you did have 9 outs that means the other 37 (46-9 = 37) cards in the deck would be non-outs.

The concept of the number of unknown cards may be confusing since there are actually less than 46 cards left in the dealer’s hand after the Turn. If he has dealt in 10 players, it means he has dealt 20 cards to the players. With 4 cards on the board after the Turn, this would mean the dealer would only have 28 cards left in the deck in his hand (actually 26 since he has burned two cards, one before the Flop and one before the Turn). However since we do not know what the other players’ holdings are, it is usually correct to assume 46 unknown cards after the Turn. For any particular card, there is a chance it was dealt to another player or still left in the deck. Since we do not know which cards were dealt to the players or are still in the deck, we cannot make any assumptions about what is left in the deck. Sometimes we can be quite sure of an opponent’s two hole cards based on the play of the hand thus far, in these cases, we can be sure there are only 44 unknown cards. But these are rare cases, it is usually correct to assume 47 unknown cards after the Flop and 46 unknown cards after the Turn.

Counting Outs

The process of counting outs is a combination of art and science. If we knew exactly what our opponent’s cards are, then it would be a science, as we would be able to calculate our outs and non-outs. But poker is a game of imperfect information. It is an unusual circumstance when we know the exact two cards our opponent holds but we can often have a good idea of what the other players may hold based on their play so far. A player who has the ability to read the hands of his opponents with precision will be able to pinpoint his opponents’ cards with a greater degree of accuracy than those players who cannot read hands well. But even for the great hand readers, there is usually a level of uncertainty.