Should you call?
Every other poker tool here tells you your chances. This one prices them. Put in what is in the pot and what it costs to continue, and it gives you the equity you need, the number of outs that clears it, and what the call is actually worth in chips.
Sizings are measured against the pot before the bet. A pot-sized bet lays 2:1 and asks for 33%; a half-pot bet lays 3:1 and asks for 25%.
Calling 50 to win 100 — a bet of 100% of the pot. You break even at 33.3%, which takes 16 outs flop → turn — 15 is not enough, at 31.9%.
What your draw is worth here
One card to come · 47 cards unseen
9 outs flop → turn is 19.1% to get there, against the 33.3% you need. Calling is worth -21.3 chips a time; folding is worth exactly zero.
It is not hopeless — it is priced wrong right now. You would need to win a further 111 on later streets, on the times you hit, to make this break even. Whether they will pay you that is a read, not a calculation, and this page will not pretend otherwise.
Chips already in the pot are not yours and play no part in this — the comparison is what calling is worth against what folding is worth, and folding is always worth zero. Counting your own earlier bets is the single most common way this sum gets done wrong.
The shortcut, and the bigger mistake next to it
Everyone is taught the rule of 4 and 2: multiply your outs by four with two cards to come, by two with one. It is a good rule, and the half of it that gets warned about is not the half that costs money.
The rule of 2 never flatters you. Across every out count on both one-card streets it lands at or below the exact figure, so the worst it can do is talk you out of a call you should have made. The rule of 4 does, once you have 7 outs or more — below that it understates, above it it runs ahead of the truth, and at 9 outs it is over by 1.0 points.
The error nobody names is the larger one
The two-card figure — 35.0% at 9 outs — assumes you see the turn and the river. Facing a bet on the flop with money still behind, that is not what your call buys: you see one card, and then you face another bet. The honest number there is 19.1%.
That gap is 15.8 points — 15x the 1.0-point error everyone worries about. Both overstate your equity, so they push the same way, and the structural one is far bigger than the arithmetic one. The two-card number is the right number in exactly two situations: the call puts someone all-in, or the turn gets checked through. Neither is the default.
| Draw | One card | Two cards | Rule of 4 | Overstated by |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pocket pair → set (2) | 4.3% | 8.4% | 8.0% | 4.2 pts |
| One overcard (3) | 6.4% | 12.5% | 12.0% | 6.1 pts |
| Gutshot straight (4) | 8.5% | 16.5% | 16.0% | 8.0 pts |
| Two overcards (6) | 12.8% | 24.1% | 24.0% | 11.4 pts |
| Open-ended straight (8) | 17.0% | 31.5% | 32.0% | 14.4 pts |
| Flush draw (9) | 19.1% | 35.0% | 36.0% | 15.8 pts |
| Flush draw + gutshot (12) | 25.5% | 45.0% | 48.0% | 19.4 pts |
| Flush draw + open-ender (15) | 31.9% | 54.1% | 60.0% | 22.2 pts |
The last column is the two-card figure minus the one-card figure: what you give yourself by assuming a free river you have not been promised.
Why folding is worth zero
The chips you have already put in are gone whatever you do next, so they cannot make a bad call good. The only comparison that matters is between calling and folding, and folding pays nothing — which is why a call needs to beat zero rather than beat your losses. It is the same reason the cost of a blackjack mistake is measured against the best play available rather than against breaking even.