Hand Odds Calculation

Remember when I said not to play for the inside straight? That’s actually only true if you’ve never played for money before. If you’re a rank beginner. The best way to get past beginner, though, is to be able to calculate your hand odds.

(I wouldn’t try bringing a calculator to the casino table, but you can obviously do this if you play online.)

Odds of making your hand from the Flop to the River:
odds % = 1 – ( ( (47-outs) / 47) * ( (46-outs) / 46) )

Where outs is the number of cards needed to make your hand.

For instance, if you hold AsKs and there are two spades on the flop, you have 9 outs, the rest of the spades, left to make your hand.

Now if you’re already to the turn, the calculation is slightly different, but you should see it coming:

Odds of making your hand from the Turn to the River:
odds % = (46-outs) / 46

Something that you need to look out for is overcounting your outs. Consider this position:
You hold: Jd Td the flop: 8d Qd Ks.
any 9 or any A gives you a straight (8 outs) and any diamond gives you a flush (9 outs).
But you don’t have 17 outs, you actually only have 15 outs, because you can’t count the Ad and 9d twice towards your total.

So we’ll calculate the odds, where outs equals 15.
odds % = 1 – ( ( (47-outs) / 47) * ( (46-outs) / 46) ), or
odds % = 1 – ( ( (47-15) / 47) * ( (46-15) / 46) )
odds % = 1 – ( (32 / 47) * ( 31 / 46 ) )
odds % = 1 – (0.681 * 0.674)
odds % = 1 – 0.4590
% of making your hand = 54.1%

Not as good as you were hoping, was it? But it’s still fantastic odds, since your average bet is going to be 1/10th of what’s in the pot (or less) at this point. In other words, you’re betting to win 10 times as much but you’ll win it more than half the time. You’re way ahead of the game.

You could work these out for yourself and memorize them. But if you don’t want to tackle basic algebra, maybe poker ain’t the game for you. Because even though you may memorize the odds of making the set, you’ve still got pot odds to deal with, and I’ll write about that later.