An out is simply any card which you want. An out usually completes a good hand, though it could also just block and opponent from completing theirs. Not all outs are equal either, some are guaranteed, others are discounted, and some just probable. In these lessons we will start with the basics. Working through several examples we will show you everything needed to be known about outs.

A Pair Sample

Counting outs is nothing more than counting cards. You look at your hand and in your head go through all the remaining cards in the deck. Any card which would improve your hand you count as an out. For example, say you have these cards:

They aren't really good cards. You can best hope to draw a pair. How many ways are there to draw that pair? For any of the 4 cards there are 3 more cards of that rank. For example, the 7♦ would be paired with any of 7♣ 7♥ 7♠. So 3 x 4 = 12, you have 12 outs to make a pair.

Notice that we only considered a single card. Though in several games you may have the opportunity to get more than one card, you still only ever consider one card at a time. Thus your outs are only ever a count of that single additional card.

Multiple Improvements

When talking about outs usually only outs that significantly improve your hand are considered. Those which simply give you a better kicker are discarded. At the moment the reasons for this may not be clear, but we will get to that later.

Take these cards for example:

We have a pair of kings, a reasonable hand in many games. Our kicker is currently a nine, thus technically any card above a nine would improve our hand. We wish however to concentrate only on the cards which give us a decent improvement.

In this case we'd love to hit the king for a three of a kind, though simply pairing up on those other cards would also be okay. We know from the previous example that the nine and the two both have 3 outs to pair up. Since we already have 2 kings, there are only 2 more in the deck. Thus we have 2 outs to get three of a kind. In total that makes 3 + 3 + 2 = 8 outs.

Guaranteed Outs

In many situations, though a pair is certainly a possibility, it wouldn't give you great confidence in your hand. In this case you would like to discard an even greater number of outs focusing solely on those which form a really good hand. For example, given the cards:

You know that you have 12 outs to make a pair, but based on the way your opponent is betting it seems unlikely that a pair would win. You do however have a flush draw. That is, if you get any of the remaining spades you would form your flush. There are 13 spades in a deck, and you have 4 of them, thus there are 9 remaining. That is, you have 9 outs to make your flush.

We'll go more into this type of analysis in our next lesson.

Practice

To help you practice what you've just learned a simple outs counting game has been created for you.

Poker Outs Counting Practice

Here you will be given four cards, like in our examples, and a specific hand you wish to form. Simply enter the number of outs which form that hand.