#3 Calculating Your Outs and the Rule of 4 and 2
Your “outs” are those cards that if they came out would give you the winning hand. If your opponent holds KK and you are holding AK. Ignoring the long odds of the QJ10 coming out to give you the straight for the moment, you essentially have 3 outs. Reasoning follows that in most circumstances you will need one of the 3 other aces to hit the flop, turn or river in order to win the hand. But, we usually only consider the outs post flop, preflop we more consider the strength of our own hand in relation to the raise, position or number players in the hand. In the better example for considering outs, you hold 109 and the flop is 567. You believe your opponent to have A7. You have ten outs. Six cards (three 9s and three 10s) will give you the winning hand with a higher pair as long as your opponent doesn’t improve. Four cards (any 8) will give you an unbeatable straight to your opponent’s hand.
So how do you know what your percent to hit your hand is? Use the rule of 4 and 2. When the flop comes out and you have calculated your outs, you use 4 after the flop and 2 after the turn. Using the above hand example, you had 10 outs after the flop. You would multiply 10 by 4. Your odds are about 40% to win the hand at best. If you didn’t hit your card on the turn, you would multiply your outs by 2. Your odds to win the hand are at best 20%. Using the rule of 4 and 2 can help prevent you from calling when you are way behind. I could go into why it works, but really, not too many care. The upshot is: 100% equals the entire deck, so the deck is broken down into percentages. Yes, there are 52 cards so each card isn’t really 2% but its close, so the percentage is an estimate. This is why you learned estimation in the 4th grade. And you thought you wouldn’t need it…
Addendum: You must realize that the percentages you are calculating are best case. You should also consider how many players have been dealt cards and how many remain in the hand. You might be seriously over rating your outs if you are looking for a straight when the board has all clubs and 5 players remain in the hand. If you are sitting at a 10 player table, the odds that your “outs” are still in the deck are lower since 20 cards have been dealt before the flop, but we generally ignore that, since the shuffle is random anyway and the 10 cards that help you could be the following 10 cards in the deck.
