Discount your outs?

[Pirc Defense]

Do you discount your outs depending on the board? If so, is there some mathematical, umm, formula that you use?

For example, I'm playing in a typical PP $.50-$1 game and raise UTG+1 with A /forums/images/icons/club.gif Q /forums/images/icons/diamond.gif. I get three callers, one of which is the BB, and the flop is 5 /forums/images/icons/diamond.gif 9 /forums/images/icons/diamond.gif T /forums/images/icons/spade.gif.

Against three or more opponents I don't semi-bluff here; the chance that all of my opponents will fold is negligible, and with two flush on the board, the chance that somebody will stick around is greater. But do I call if someone bets?

Four players for two bets each makes 4.25 BB, making the odds to call a bet on the flop 8.5:1. Enough for overcards. But, and here's the point of all this, with three or more opponents and a coordinated board, I discount my outs by two. I tell myself I'm only playing with four outs at this point, and I would need approximately 11:1, which I'm not getting.

Does anyone else use a "formula" such as this to decide whether to play on? If my thinking is incorrect, what's wrong with it?

A Queen did hit on the river, but I had folded. Doh! JQ took it down.

[rkiray]

Yes you must discount your outs. There have been many threads over in the small stakes forum talking about this lately. I'm not sure if there are any simple formulas. I believe alot of this is judgement and basically you need a lot of experience to judge these things. This is basically closely related to the subjects implied odds and reverse implied odds. One rule I use is I discount much more for flush cards than straight cards. Of course straight cards 9 or higher are dangerous.

[Bob T.]

In a situation, where some of my outs might not be good, or might improve someone else more, I just want to be sure that I have an overlay for my draw. For example, on a rainbow board, I might call with a gutshot on the flop with as little as 7-1 pot odds, but if the board is twotone, I wouldn't call unless I had about 13-1 odds.

[Ed Miller]

This is my mathematical formula: Overcards suck.

Basically, I don't call with overcards in a multiway pot unless they are suited and I have at least a backdoor flush on a ragged, rainbow board. In that case, I will generally take one off in a raised pot if it is one bet to me and I am almost sure that it won't be raised behind me. There are all sorts of issues with overcards... most of them coming back to the fact that you on a longshot draw to the second-worst hand type in poker.

[dr_mabuse]

hi pirc,

i sounds like you are a chess-player ?

thanks and bye
olaf

[Pirc Defense]

Thanks for your replies. Seems that most people do discount their outs, but most don't use a hard formula to do so. Just getting some overlay seems to be the catch.

I like to discount my outs by two if I have three or more opponents, and there is a flush draw. Subtract another out if there is also a straight draw. Subtract at least one out if there is four or more opponents (more likely that someone has two pair or better). Makes it hard to play on in an unraised pot, but with the overlay I'm getting, I believe the numbers will work out.

dr_mabuse: Chess is where my name comes from but I'm not really much of a chess player. Several posters have mentioned it, but I haven't responded. My name could have been Guicco Piano, but I was feeling defensive the day I thought of my handle. /forums/images/icons/smile.gif

[Al_Capone_Junior]

In the specific example you gave, drawing to a queen wouldn't be the best idea, because many players play QT or Q9. So you have to discount them a little further than you mentioned. When your card might make someone else a str8, it's also wise to discount it. In addition, you had a possible flush draw on board, giving you additional reason to give up on the flop.

So yes, you should often discount some of your outs. The most obvious situation is when you have a str8 draw with two of a suit on board that you have none of. In a multiway pot, you quite possibly only have six outs, not eight.

al