One of the key elements of poker is knowing your “outs,” which is to say how many cards can improve your hand. This is generally looked at in terms of calculating your own odds to win, but I hit a situation today where knowing the outs on the board would have prevented a mistake by myself.
The situation was that there was a flush draw and an open-ended straight draw in the flop. I had top pair and top kicker. Normally, this is enough to win, and with a big enough bet, this would be enough to weed out most draws. The problem is that with the flush/straight draw possibilities, even a big bet may not scare some people off. That was the case tonight.
I knew that the outs would create very positive pot odds unless I did something drastic, so I went all-in. The trouble is that there were just so many outs available that two other people went all-in with me. At that moment I knew I was lost. This was an important lesson–with so many outs on the board, risking an all-in is very unwise.
Tags: all-in, Overall strategy