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Posts Tagged ‘winning hand’

If you were trapped in a burning building and there was only one way out, your odds of survival would not be very good. If there were two ways out, your odds would greatly improve. Your odds of survival would improve with each additional way out of the building.
In poker your outs are the unseen cards that will complete or improve your hand to make it the winning hand. Each additional card or "out" will improve your percentage of surviving the hand and coming out a winner. I'm not trying to compare playing a poker hand with a being trapped in a burning building. (Although some people might feel that way.) I just want you to view outs as your indicator of success or failure when determining whether or not to continue with a hand.

Your skills at reading your opponents and reading the board are important when figuring your outs. You need to assess your opponents' hands and try to determine what they may have. Your perception of their hands will form the basis for deciding what you need to beat them. You then need to read the board and determine which cards will give you the winning hand. The cards that you determine can improve your hand to a winner will be your outs. You can figure your odds of improving your hand once you determine your number of outs. Unfortunately, knowing your number of outs and the percentages for making a hand will not be much help if you do not read your opponent's hand correctly. Your opponent may have a hand that you can't beat even if you complete your hand. This known as drawing to a dead hand and was covered in the previous chapter.

Reading your opponent's hand is a skill that you need to develop. You will become more proficient with experience. It is not an exact science and you will be wrong many times. This should not stop you from trying. Each time you play a hand you must consider the strength of your hand in relation to the cards on the board and what hand your opponent could be holding. You then figure the percentage for improving your hand based on the number of outs you have.
Some hands, such as a four-card flush are fairly common and you will easily remember your outs for that hand. Other hands are less common and will take a little thought on your part. Let's take a look at a few examples to help show you how to determine your outs.

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When you get to the river there are two mistakes that you can make. One is to call a bet, which will cost you the price of a bet. The other is to fold your hand, which will cost you all the money in the pot. Obviously, folding your hand will be a far more costly mistake than merely calling a bet.

It is said that a good Hold'em player earns about one big bet an hour. If you call and lose, you could be giving up an hour's profit. If you fold a winning hand, you are giving up many hours worth of profit. This is not to say that you should never fold when you are beaten. However, if there is a chance that you could win, then most of the time you will be justified in calling on the river. The reason to make the call comes down again to pot odds.

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