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David,

First of all, you messed up in your first example -- there is only one Ace left in the deck.

I completely understand what you're saying, but I don't see much practicality to it at all. Counting outs is never an exact science when we're at the table. Sure, in your example, we'll have something like 9ish outs sometimes when we're behind. Sometimes, though, we'll have 10. If you want an exact answer to how many outs you have, you aren't going to get it, because no one knows.

Unless you can concretely rule a card as being out there, the best you can do is a rough guesstimate; this is obviously what you're trying to allude to, but it's not really that much of a revelation.


The reason we say "10" is because it's the closest to a reasonable number anyone can come up with quickly.

Let's ask the following question: you hold A[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img]7[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] on a 3[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 4[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] 9[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img] board. It's a 6-way pot and was capped on the flop. What are your odds of hitting the winning hand by the river?

Rob