Flush Draw Odds: Chance of Completing a Flush Draw

Flush draw odds: about 35% from flop to river

You flop four cards of one suit. Two cards are still to come, the turn and the river, and you need one more card of that suit. That is a flush draw, and the number most players want is how often it gets there.

With nine outs, the chance of improving by the river is 35%¹. Some charts round the same spot to roughly 36%, which is the same figure with a little rounding on top². Either way, think of it as roughly one time in three.

That "one in three" framing matters more than the exact decimal. If you are putting money in purely to complete the flush, you are missing about two times out of three. The draw is a strong hand to hold, but it is not a made hand, and the price you pay has to reflect that.

The same charts that give you 35% for a flush draw give you other numbers worth knowing, because they tell you how much better a flush draw is than the alternatives:

A flush draw is the best of the common draws, and it beats an open-ended straight draw by a small margin. That is why players chase it harder than a straight.

How the 9-out calculation works

The math is simpler than it looks. You hold four cards of one suit. Thirteen cards of each suit exist in a 52-card deck, so nine cards of your suit are still out there somewhere. Those nine cards are your outs¹.

You do not know where those nine cards are. Some are in the deck, some are in other players' hands, some may already be folded. For odds purposes you treat every unseen card as equally likely, which is why the count is nine and not something smaller.

From the flop, two cards are coming. You have two chances to hit one of nine cards. The clean way to think about it is the reverse: how often do you miss both times? With nine outs among the 47 unseen cards, you miss any single one of those cards about 80.9% of the time. Missing both the turn and the river works out to about 65%, which leaves roughly 35% as the chance of hitting at least once¹.

That "at least once" is important. The 35% includes the times you hit the turn and the times you hit the river, and it does not double count the rare runouts where you hit both. It is one number covering the whole two-card sequence.

The same logic scales to bigger draws. A gutshot straight flush draw has 13 outs and improves about 48% of the time by the river. An open-ended straight flush draw has 15 outs and gets there about 54% of the time¹. Those are monster draws, and the jump from 35% to 54% is why they play so differently from a plain flush draw.

Turn and river odds compared

The 35% is a flop-to-river number. Once the turn arrives, everything changes, because only one card is left.

If you are still one card short of a flush on the turn, the chance the hand completes on the river is about 19%³. That figure is for a hand that is one card short of a flush with the turn already dealt, so it is the single-card version of the same draw. The 34.97% number is the flop-to-river figure, covering both the turn and the river, which is why it lands near 35% while the one-card chance sits close to one in five.

The cleaner way to hold the two numbers in your head is this: with two cards to come you have roughly a 35% shot, and with one card to come you have roughly an 18% shot². The 18% is the turn-to-river figure, and it is also roughly the chance of hitting on the turn alone when you are sitting on the flop.

That split is what makes the turn decision different from the flop decision. On the flop you are paying for two chances. On the turn you are paying for one, and the price you are offered usually has not halved to match. A draw that was worth calling on the flop can become a fold on the turn for exactly this reason.

For contrast, the draws that need two exact cards are close to hopeless. If a player needs two specific cards on the turn and river to win, the chance of getting both is only 0.3%³. That is the difference between a draw and a dream.

Rule of 2 and 4 for quick estimates

Nobody multiplies fractions at the table. The shortcut is the rule of 2 and 4, and it is close enough for live decisions.

On the flop, with two cards to come, multiply your outs by four. Nine outs times four gives 36%, which is a hair above the exact 35%¹. On the turn, with one card to come, multiply your outs by two. Nine outs times two gives 18%, which matches the turn-to-river figure².

The rule works because each out is worth roughly 2% per card to come. It drifts a little at high out counts, but for the draws you actually face it is accurate enough to compare against the price you are being offered.

A few worked examples using the same method:

• Flush draw, nine outs, on the flop: 9 x 4 = 36%, against an exact 35%¹
• Flush draw, nine outs, on the turn: 9 x 2 = 18%, matching the chart²
• Open-ended straight draw, eight outs, on the flop: 8 x 4 = 32%, against an exact figure of about 32%²
• Gutshot, four outs, on the flop: 4 x 4 = 16%, against an exact 16.5%¹

The rule is a tool for speed, not precision. If a decision is close, the exact number is the one to trust, and the exact number for a flush draw is 35% from the flop and about 18% from the turn¹.

One caution: the rule tells you how often you complete the draw, not how often you win. If your flush is not the highest possible flush, completing it can still lose. That is a separate problem, and in Omaha it is the main problem.

Does the draw type matter: Hold'em vs PLO

The card math does not change between games. Nine outs is nine outs, and a flush draw completes about 35% of the time by the river whether you are playing Hold'em or Omaha¹.

What changes is how often the completed flush is good.

Omaha is described as a "nut" game: if you do not have the best possible hand, the chances of winning the pot are extremely low⁴. In Hold'em, two players rarely both hold a flush draw on the same board. In Omaha, each player holds four hole cards, so flush draws are far more common, and the player with the ace-high flush draw has you covered. Your 35% is real, but a chunk of the times you hit, you hit and still lose.

That is why Omaha players talk about nut flush draws rather than flush draws. The draw itself is the same nine outs. The value of the draw is not.

Omaha is most commonly played pot-limit, which is where the name PLO comes from⁵. Pot-limit betting caps how much can go in on each street, which changes the price you are offered on a draw but not the underlying odds. Omaha can also be played with or without betting limits, and it is sometimes called Omaha Hold'em⁴.

There is a split-pot version too. Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo lets you win part of the pot for the best five-card hand and part for the worst hand that does not contain a pair and is no stronger than eight-high⁶. In that game a flush draw only contests half the pot, so the effective value of the same nine outs is lower again.

For a fuller comparison of how the two games differ, see Texas Hold'em vs Omaha and the Omaha poker rules page.

Flush draws in other games and formats

The same nine-out draw shows up in games beyond the two main ones, and the numbers travel with it.

In Short Deck Poker, played with a 36-card deck, the deck is thinner and the draw percentages shift. A flopped open-ended straight draw in Short Deck has a little over a 45% chance of making it by the river, compared with about 31.5% for the same draw in regular Hold'em⁷. Flush draws change too, because removing the low cards changes how many cards of each suit remain. If you play the format, see the Short Deck poker rules page.

In video poker the draw is the whole game. In Jacks or Better, drawing to a flush from J, Q, K of the same suit has a 3.98% chance of success, and a flush overall comes in at 1 in 509⁸. Those numbers are much smaller than a Hold'em flush draw because you are drawing from five cards with no community cards, and the paytable, not the pot, sets the price.

House-banked poker games price flush draws directly. In Ultimate Texas Hold'em, the 2x Play bet odds are more favorable on two pair or better, or a flush draw, which is one card short of a flush⁹. In Mississippi Stud a flush pays 6 to 1 and a straight flush pays 100 to 1¹⁰. In Macau's Pair Plus bet, a flush pays 4 to 1 and a straight flush 40 to 1¹¹. These are fixed payouts, so the draw odds matter to the house edge rather than to a pot you are building.

Side games on poker platforms price them too. A Flush bet on the flop pays x17 with an RTP of 85.09%, while a Triple or Straight Flush bet pays x170 with an RTP of 79.80%¹². In All-In or Fold Jackpot games, a Hold'em entry needs at least a straight flush using both hole cards¹³.

If you want the wider picture on outs and pot odds, the poker odds and probabilities page covers the full set of draws, and the poker hand rankings page shows where a flush sits relative to everything else.