On the flop, 47 cards are still unknown, so one out is one chance in 47 on the next card. The first table fixes that denominator for each street; the second converts any out count from one to fifteen into a share.
| Street | Known Cards | Unseen Cards | One-Card Outs Convert As |
|---|---|---|---|
| Preflop | 2 | 50 | outs / 50 |
| Flop | 5 | 47 | outs / 47 |
| Turn | 6 | 46 | outs / 46 |
| River | 7 | 45 | no cards remain |
Why the unseen count is not 52 minus five
An opponent’s two hole cards are unknown to you, and an unknown card is still unseen even though it is no longer in the deck from their point of view. On the flop you know your two cards and the three board cards, which leaves 47 cards you cannot see. On the turn one more board card is known, leaving 46. The river row says “no cards remain” because no further card will be dealt, not because the unseen count has reached zero.
Use the Street column to pick the right denominator before doing anything else. A flop calculation made with the turn denominator will overstate your chance, and the error grows with the number of outs. It also keeps the later rows honest: once the river is dealt there is no next card to convert, so the only remaining question is whether the hand you hold wins.
| Outs | Next Card | By the River |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2.13% | 4.26% |
| 2 | 4.26% | 8.42% |
| 3 | 6.38% | 12.49% |
| 4 | 8.51% | 16.47% |
| 5 | 10.64% | 20.35% |
| 6 | 12.77% | 24.14% |
| 7 | 14.89% | 27.84% |
| 8 | 17.02% | 31.45% |
| 9 | 19.15% | 34.97% |
| 10 | 21.28% | 38.39% |
| 11 | 23.40% | 41.72% |
| 12 | 25.53% | 44.96% |
| 13 | 27.66% | 48.10% |
| 14 | 29.79% | 51.16% |
| 15 | 31.91% | 54.12% |
Reading the two probability columns
Next Card is the share of the unseen deck that completes your draw on the immediately following card. By the River counts both remaining cards, turn and river, so it is always larger. A draw with nine outs is roughly one card in five on the turn but close to one in three by the river. That gap is why a call can pay for itself with two cards to come and stop paying with one, even when the chip price in front of you has not changed.
Read the row by out count, not by the type of draw. A Flush draw and a Straight draw with the same number of clean outs share the same row. What separates them is how many of those outs are actually live, which is a question about the board and the opponent’s range, not about this table.
Turning the share into a decision
Compare the share with the chips you must put in relative to the pot. If the pot offers a smaller share of the total chips than your draw’s chance of completing, the call pays for itself over repeated hands; if it offers a larger share, it does not. The pot odds formula gives that comparison in one line, and implied odds covers what changes when more chips can go in on later streets.
Keep the comparison in chips, not in the probability alone. A draw with a large chance of completing is still a losing call if the price is large enough, and a thin draw can be correct when the pot is already big. The table supplies the left side of that comparison; the pot supplies the right side.
Where this table stops
These figures assume every out is live and that completing the draw wins the hand. A card that completes your Straight but puts three cards of one suit on the board may also complete someone else’s Flush, so some outs are not clean. Discounted outs are a judgement about the opponent’s range, not a change to the arithmetic above.
Count your outs, pick the correct street, read the share, then adjust the count before you compare it with the pot. Doing those steps in order is what keeps a reference number from turning into a decision you cannot justify later.