A Common Beginner's Mistake
I happened to interface with the strategy section on a well-known poker site and read the following;
“ ……… that leaves you with 9 possible outs that could hit a flush.
You would think you have relatively good odds for a flush, right? Well, not exactly.
Because if it is a game involving multiple players, one or several of them could also be holding some of the remaining spades, which effectively lowers your odds. Whether, or how many spades the other players hold is anyone’s guess and you’ll have to wait for the showdown.
“
While true, it basically is irrelevant for it fails to mention that if your opponents do not have a spade, your chances for hitting the flush on the river improve. Therefore, in calculating odds in such situations, you should assume critical cards are in the deck unless you have good clues as to what an opponent may have.
Beginners often think that the card(s) they need may be held by an opponent and therefor they act wrongly.
3 Replies
It's probably a **** article written by chatgpt or something.
But, that said, there is a slight effect that increases the flush draws in your opponent's range. Although I don't think this effect is strong enough to ever be worth 1 out, I don't know never thought too much about it.
If we are HU, (as opposed to a yet unbetted multiway flop) and their range has a lot of flush draws I would probably be more concerned about dominating or being dominated IF it eventually hits rather than what the exact effect on the odds are.
This article is wrong. You have 9 outs and 6 known cards so your probability of hitting a flush is 9/46. In a 9 handed game 25 cards are dealt before the river, so you hit the flush when the 26th card is your suit. In a heads up game the 12th card is the river. Why would the probability of the 12th card being, say a spade, be different than the probability that the 26th card is?
What is different multi-way vs heads up is (assuming you don’t have the nut draw), the probability of getting beaten by a larger flush is much greater in a multi-way game than heads up.
This article is wrong. You have 9 outs and 6 known cards so your probability of hitting a flush is 9/46. In a 9 handed game 25 cards are dealt before the river, so you hit the flush when the 26th card is your suit. In a heads up game the 12th card is the river. Why would the probability of the 12th card being, say a spade, be different than the probability that the 26th card is?
What is different multi-way vs heads up is (assuming you don’t have the nut draw), the probability of getting beaten by
Same reason that if there's a multiway 5Bet and you hold AK, there's less than 3 aces on the deck for you to hit. Range blockers
