Estimating Winning Chances

Hi everyone!

I've just read SSHE and I'm now trying to implement the ideas into my game. Naturally I'm having trouble keeping track of the amount of bets in the pot and counting outs at the same time, calculating odds etc.pp. But one thing I have most trouble with is estimating the winning chances of my hand. Since most of the ideas in the book are based on pot equity, I figure, having a clear clue of how much my hand is worth really is key.

I understand that when I have a nut flush draw that has 35% chance to come in, I have a 35% chance of winning. But what about hands like top pair or something like that?
How do you guys estimate the chances of your hands? Do you have something like a checklist that you follow so you don't need to think everytime if you haven't missed anything?

I could really use some advice to get me started... /images/graemlins/confused.gif

[SavageMiser]

I think you may be making the outs issue too complicated. An out isn't an out if it doesn't make you the winning hand, as far as I'm concerned. So there's no need to calculate winning percentage on top of an outs calculation.

I personally remember the outs for a few common situations, like flush draws, open-ended straight draws, etc. The real key is being able to recognize when your "outs" aren't really outs, like when one of your straight outs completes someone's flush.

As far as winning percentages go, that's something that changes from hand to hand. Sometimes top pair is good, sometimes not. Your decision depends on the board, the action and your opponents.

[Tropex]

Amen.

In live games keeping track of the pot is harder but online it should be fairly easy since you can see the potsize all the time and can just divide it by the bet size (shouldn't be hard calculation to make). As for the pot odds, you should just remember the approximate odds for each number of outs. Good thing to learn this is to have a chart with the outs and odds for one and for 2 cards to come and when you play this way for some time, you'll notice you remember them automatically.

After you've learned those, you can concentrate totally on seeing which of your outs are outs, discounting the real amount from there and then just remember the odds for that amount of outs.

Also a good method that I thought up (found out some pro had thought of this as well though) was to take your amount of outs, multiply it by the amount of cards to come and then multiply it by 2 to get the percentage of you making the winning hand.

So if you have 9 outs for a flush and two cards to come, you multiply that by two (18) since there are turn and river to come and then multiply that by 2 to get 36% which is fairly close to what it actually is. Note that this is an approximation but fairly accurate one (you rarely need to make decisions too much more accurate than this). Also if there was only one card to come, it would give 18%, which is pretty close to the actual 5-to-1.

In the beginning, I also found comparing percentages easier than comparing the odds (since percentages were easier to approximate imo). So basically if you calling raises is lower compared to the pot size (in %) than the probability you're going to have the winning hand, then gogo!

As for top pair, top pair isn't pretty good in full ring, but in 6-max (and less) top pair top kicker is a monster and top pair, worse kicker is still a good hand.

I hope this made sense and helped you some way.

[oreogod]

An even easier method is to multiply by 4 on the flop and 2 on the turn. /images/graemlins/cool.gif

[crunchy1]

[ QUOTE ]
As for top pair, top pair isn't pretty good in full ring

[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree.

[Carmine]

I may be wrong but I think the poster is asking not so much about outs, but rather what a certain hand is worth PF for example agaisnt a given range. More along the lines of pokerstove stats.

If you are asking, instead, what your TPTK is worth agaisnt a draw that you put your opponent on then you would count his(opponents) outs and turn that into a percentage. A nut OESD has 8 outs, 5:1 to hit, 20% pot equity for him 80% for you. If it is multiway then you do the same for other players(one might be drawing to a set, another to two pair, etc.)Everyone is then assigned a portion of the pot. Of, course the best you can do is estimate and how well you can estimate depends on alot of factors.

Hopefully I explained that right.

[W. Deranged]

I'm with Crunchy.

[Jake (The Snake)]

Download PokerStove and have fun.