Outs

An out is a card that saves you. You hold four diamonds, nine remain in the deck, each of them is an out. You hold four in a row, 8-9-10-jack, and four sevens plus four queens complete the straight: eight outs. They are counted one by one, with no «roughly», because the price of the decision moves with every card.

Outs turn into odds. There are 47 unseen cards on the flop and 46 on the turn, and the share of useful ones among them is the probability. The rule of four and two: on the flop multiply outs by four for the odds of getting there by the river; on the turn multiply by two. Nine outs on the flop are about 35%, on the turn about 20%. The rule is crude, but nothing more precise fits at the table, and showdown is seconds away.

Not every out is clean. A card that completes your hand can complete a bigger hand for the opponent: the fifth diamond gives you a flush and him a higher one if he holds the ace of diamonds. Such outs count for half or not at all, and that is the first place people go wrong when their odds look better than they are.

An example from session 15

Three tens on a board of 4♦ K♣ J♣ T♥, where any ace-queen is a straight. The opponent raises; I need to add $24.61 into a $56.09 pot, and the call breaks even at 30%. Besides the chance he is bluffing, I have ten cards out of forty-six for a full house: three kings, three jacks, three fours and the last ten. Every one of them beats any straight he holds. Folding is not an option, and I did not fold.

The same in business

Outs are the list of specific events in which the venture survives, one by one, not «there are chances». Three clients in the pipeline, one regulator, one date. Whoever can name his outs knows the price of his draw. Whoever says «the odds are good» has not counted, and usually has fewer than he thinks, because some of the outs complete the competitor's hand too.

The whole hand is in session 15: “The arithmetic of a planned loss”.

The other terms are in the glossary.