That's it, in a nutshell.

Counting the Outs

For a more complete discussion of outs and accounting for different situations, read through my Counting Your Outs at the Poker Table article. In the meantime, here are some common "outs" numbers.

Example 1:
Suppose you are sitting at the table, and you're on a Ace high flush draw. There are $13 in the pot, and you are facing a $2 bet. The next card to come is the turn.

1. A flush draw gives you 9 outs.
2. Use the chart to find that the odds of landing that flush on the turn are 4.22 to 1 against you.
3. Multiply 4.22 x $2 (which is $8.44)

The pot needs to be $8.44 or larger for it to be, without a doubt, the right thing to do to call in this situation in a cash game. In a tournament, things like stack sizes and blind amounts should be considered, but the pot odds would still be right for calling.

Example 2:
You are in a no limit cash game, sitting on another nut flush draw. This time there are $20 in the pot, and you are facing a $7 bet. But, that bet would also put you all-in, since you only have $7 left.

1. A flush draw gives you 9 outs.
2. Use the cart to find that the odds of landing that flush on either the turn or the river is 1.86 to 1 against you. Use the "either or" column because you're paying once up front to see both the turn and the river cards.
3. Multiply 1.86 x $7 (which is less than $14)

The pot is $20, which is greater than $14. You can call the bet knowing that you have the right pot odds in this situation.

Pot Odds pay off in the Long Term
By that I mean, even if you have the pot odds to make four or five different calls during a night, you may not land any of your draws. That means money spent chasing cards instead of money in your chipstack. Which is ok. If you have the proper odds to call, when you do land your draws the payoff will be greater than the risk you took by calling.

Over the long haul, finding and exploiting situations like that will add chips to your stack.

A close cousin of Pot Odds are "Implied Odds". You can read over my article Implied Odds in Poker Explained for a better understanding, or just the gist of, implied odds and how they might affect your decision-making at the tables.

If you plan to play poker online, it would be well worth the time to take my Pot Odds Chart for Printing, print it out and keep it by the computer. You can glance at it during a hand, and get the information you need in a moment. If you don't do that, or something similar, you can easily find yourself in a situation where you know pot odds could help, but the numbers aren't readily available so you just guess.

Here is a pot odds chart you can review, or bookmark.

Pot Odds Chart
Outs	Turn (X:1)	River (X:1)	Turn or River (X:1)
20	1.35	1.30	0.48
19	1.47	1.42	0.54
18	1.61	1.56	0.60
17	1.77	1.71	0.67
16	1.94	1.88	0.76
15	2.13	2.07	0.85
14	2.36	2.28	0.96
13	2.62	2.54	1.08
12	2.92	2.83	1.22
11	3.27	3.18	1.40
10	3.70	3.60	1.61
9	4.22	4.11	1.86
8	4.88	4.75	2.18
7	5.71	5.57	2.59
6	6.83	6.67	3.14
5	8.40	8.20	3.91
4	10.75	10.50	5.07
3	14.67	14.33	7.01
2	22.50	22.00	10.88
1	46.00	45.00	22.50