In this situation, you are missing the middle card in your straight combination (9), and only four cards in the deck will give you a straight (9s, 9d, 9h, 9c). Imagine that you are holding 7c 8d, and the flop comes Td Jc As. If we compare this with an open-ended straight draw, which has eight outs, a 17% or 4.88-to-1 chance of hitting on the turn, and a 17.4% or 4.75-to-1 chance of hitting on the river, we can see why the gutshot draw is by far the weaker hand in poker. The odds of hitting one of the outs for this draw on the turn are around 8.5%, or 10.75-to-1, while the odds of hitting it on the river are 8.7%, or 10.5-to-1.
When a draw is described as a gutshot draw, it means that only a card of a certain rank can turn it into a straight, and since there are only four cards of each rank in the deck, the gutshot draw only has four outs. In other words, if a card of a certain rank comes on future streets, the gutshot draw will turn into a straight combination. A gutshot, also known as an inside straight draw, is a poker hand missing the middle card in the combination to make a straight.
