I read and hear players speak about outs as if those cards are actually possible to get when in reality they might have been: burnt or mucked...question is: Is it even POSSIBLE to know what your outs really are? Robert

Answer

You are quite right that some of your outs may have already been discarded. In full ring games there are a lot of cards dealt and folded pre-flop. This makes it quite likely that one of your outs is actually sitting in the muck. On top of this it is quite possible that your remaining opponents could even be holding one of your outs! So it is absolutely true that you can never be certain how many outs you actually have. This doesn't mean it is futile.

Counting outs in general is just a rough guide to your hand strength. Even if you knew with certainty that your cards are not already in the muck, you can never truly be certain what your opponent has. You also can't forget that your opponent also has outs that could neutralize your hand. There are a lot of variables that need to be considered to truly know the strength of your hand. Obviously the more you know about your hand the better, but it need not always be exact.

In many cases knowing that you have 1-5 outs instead of 5-10 outs is more than enough to make a good decision. If you are a fairly passive player you might consider only your guaranteed outs and play a very safe game. Whereas the bully at the table rolls over so many players that his +/-5outs estimates will be more than adequate. That is, just knowing your outs is not a strategy. It's a tool to calculate odds and estimate hand strength. How you use that knowledge depends a lot on how much faith you put in it, and very much on the current game situation.

From the view of statistics an unknown hand in the muck or in the deck are treated the same. If it is impossible to know which cards have been mucked then you must assume they could still be in the deck. So if the rest of your assumptions are correct, counting outs that may be in the muck is perfectly legitimate. If you have an idea of what might have been mucked however, well, that's an entirely different situation.