Online poker strategy, poker room reviews and the latest poker news

Heres the latest piece I wrote regarding american poker legislation.
Online poker strategy, poker room reviews and the latest poker news:

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Color Up Poker Blog: thURsday HANDS: Paying Attention To Your Opponents...

Solid hand analysis I did for another blog. Worth a read so check it out. Great company as well. Their new line of poker training cards are great for beginners to learn the game quickly. They also help advanced players memorize outs and odds.

If you would like a hand history analysis of your own, leave a comment. You can delete your screenname if you choose, just let me know which player you are and any reads on players you may have.

Color Up Poker Blog: thURsday HANDS: Paying Attention To Your Opponents...: Welcome to ThURsday HANDS. Every week we look at UR HANDS and see how you played them, and if there is any room for improvement. ...

Outs in Poker

When referring to the term "outs" in poker, we are saying that this is the amount of cards we have left that will improve or make or hand. For example, we have 2 hearts in our hand and the flop brings two more hearts. This gives us 4 to a flush. So we can now say that we have nine outs to hit our flush by the river.

So, how do we determine how many outs we have? Using the example above (four to a flush) we need to know how many cards will make our flush. There are 13 cards of each suit in a standard deck. We need to subtract the number of cards we either hold in our hand or are already on the board. In this case we have two in our hand and there are two on the board. Therefore we have nine outs (13-the 4 we already see = 9).

Other examples would when we hold a pair pre-flop. We will have two outs to make a set. When we have AKo, we will have six outs to make a pair of kings or aces. Perhaps a more common and useful scenario would when we have an open ended straight draw. If we have TJ and the board is QKx, we need a nine or an ace to complete our hand. Since there are 4 of each card remaining, we have 8 outs.

Now I want to discuss an important factor when determining whether we should call a bet when we are drawing to a hand. The first thing to determine is how many outs we have which we know how to do now. Next we will need to figure out if the bet is worth calling based on the outs we have.

Sticking with the flush example, let's say we are faced with a $4 bet. Counting the $4 bet the pot now holds $12. To figure out the odds we need to call we will multiply the number of outs we have either 4 or 2. If we are on the flop and plan on seeing a turn and river then we multiply by 4. If we are on the turn and will only see one more card, we multiply by 2. This is commonly called the 4/2 rule.

If we take our nine outs that make the flush and multiply it by four since we are on the flop, we get 36. This will be the percentage that out hand will hit by the river. So, we now know that we have a 36% chance to make a flush when seeing two more cards.

We now take the amount of money in the pot and the amount we have to call to determine whether it will be a profitable call. Calling a $4 bet when we can win $12 will give 3-1 odds. Since we are 36% to make a flush this means that we are slightly more then 3-1. Therefore we are getting the right price to call this bet. Any time our chances of hitting our hand are equal or greater to the amount of money we have to call relative to the size f the pot, is a profitable call.

To sum it up, we first find the number of outs we have. Next we determine what percentage we are to make our hand based on the number of cards left to come, i.e. turn and river or just river. Finally we find the odds we are getting to call the bet based on the current size of the pot including the bet we have to call.