SSH pot equity question?

[PapiChulo503]

on page 36 it says ", you have flopped a nut flush draw against your opponents. You have a 35% chance to make your hand by the river, and therefore, also about a 35% pot equity."

If you have a nut flush draw you have 9 outs out of 47 unseen cards or 4.1 to 1 according to the table on page 30. Isnt that more like a 20% chance of making your hand by the river? Or am I not taking something into consideration?

The one thing I noticed was the use of the word MAKE. Does make mean MAKE the flush? or does MAKE mean winning the hand?

[Phoenix1010]

Haven't read the book, but yes you are leaving something out. It's 4.1 to 1 to catch a fifth flush card with only 1 card to come. With two cards to come, you've also got two chances to complete your flush, and so you have a 35%, or 1.9 to 1, chance to end up with a flush. And I'm pretty sure it means make your flush. Sometimes the flush card will pair the board and give someone else a full house, which would then be the winning hand.

Regards,
Steve

[PapiChulo503]

I guess a better question would be......

How do you calculate the odds of you making your flush by the river when you flop your flush draw?

thnx for the response

[Phoenix1010]

I think you should have posted this in the probability forum, but I'm happy to help. The calculation for flop to river percentages is as follows:
1 - [ ((47 - Outs) / 47) * ((46 - Outs) / 46) ]

you can plug in any number of outs into that formula to get the percentage that you will make your hand by the river.

Regards,
Steve

[PapiChulo503]

I really appreciate your help. I can see why most books will give you some sort of chart to determine this as opposed to giving you the formula.

You would have to be pretty sharp to do a calc like that while playing in a game.

thanks again.

[MyMindIsGoing]

[ QUOTE ]
I really appreciate your help. I can see why most books will give you some sort of chart to determine this as opposed to giving you the formula.

You would have to be pretty sharp to do a calc like that while playing in a game.

thanks again.

[/ QUOTE ]

if you go all in on the flop with 9 outs you have approx 36% chance of hitting turn or river. Take the outs * 4. Gives a good approximate.
4 * 9 = 36

Chance of hitting on next card only (either you are on the flop and want to calculate how big chanse there is for hitting turn or you are on turn and want to calculate chance of hitting river).

Take outs * 2 and then add 2.
9 * 2 + 2 = 20%

Afrer a while you don't need to think about these things, it just comes by it self when you play.

[GrunchCan]

Specifically in the context of this book example, "make" means both make the flush and drag the pot. Look at it this way:

Pot Equity is a quantification of the chance that you will win this pot, expressed as a relative number of bets. For example, suppose you know with 100% certianty that there is a 35% chance that you will win this pot. (How you know this with 100% certianty is not relevant to this example!) And suppose that right now there is $10 in the pot. Since you have a 35% chance of winning this pot, you could say that $3.50 of the pot 'belongs' to you. You have a Pot Equity of $3.50.

In the context of the book example, Ed Miller has made the presumption that if you make your flush, it will be the best hand. That is, making the flush wins the pot 100% of the time. But suppose making the flush only wins the pot 90% of the time. What then?

In that case, first compute your equity based on a 100% win - you get 35% as before. Then reduce that by 10%, resulting in an equity of around 31%. This might not seem like much of a difference, but remember. SSH was written specifically for low-limit ring cash games; the difference there between 31% and 35% equity can mean the difference between raising and folding.

This is only an explanation of what pot equity is. It is not an explanation of what it means, or how you can use it to play poker. Very signifigantly, it is not a discussion of how you compute pot equity. That, it turns out, is the real trick. Pot equity can be considered to be the nexus of all poker decisions - if you can compute it correctly, and if you are playing percentage poker.