Actual outs

This is a response to mdlm's post in a Mid/High Stakes thread. I felt as a general concept, it would be more appropriate (and would get more responses) if we discussed on this forum instead. The original message can be found here:


http://www.twoplustwo.com/cgi-bin/newforums/mediumholdem.pl?read=45446


Trying to determine "actual outs" based on your opponents' likely holdings is an interesting concept, and something I've thought about in the past, but I think you'll only get yourself in trouble trying to apply this idea to a low-limit game, or any game with a lot of multiway action.


If you think about it, the only time you can make a considerable downgrade to your number of outs based on the probable holding of others is when, as in your example, there's a multiway pot, and everyone appears to like their hand. But in those situations, the pot will be large enough that you should usually continue anyway.


I don't think this idea is totally without its merits. But my overall intuition is that if you're too eager to assume that your outs are "dead", so to speak, you're going to be folding a lot of winners, which is a much bigger disaster than continuing in a hand where you actually have 3 or 4 fewer outs than you think.


I'd like to hear others' thoughts on this.

Phil,


Thx for your answer to the question. Am I correct in thinking that there is no literature on this subject?


Also, note that estimating the actual outs doesn't necessarily reduce the hands you play. It may increase the hands that you play by making it easier to put your opponents on an inferior hand.