[gaming_mouse]

What you say makes no sense. You can't be getting 2:1 on the flop and 4:1 on the turn. That just doesn't make sense.

You are getting 2:1 for the flop and the turn combined, which is pretty good (a strong draw) that you will almost always have odds to draw to.

Dave,

I truly apologize that you have had to read through so much about such a simple concept. Facts about probabilities:

1. On the flop, if you have a 4-flush, you are a 2:1 dog to make your flush by the river. This is simply a probability calculation and has nothing to do with your effective odds or any other kinds of odds. The CHANCE that another spade comes IN THE NEXT TWO CARDS is:

1 - (38/47)*(37/46)=.3498, about 35%, making a 2:1 dog.


2. If the turn card is a blank, the CHANCE that the RIVER CARD MAKES YOUR FLUSH is about 20% -- 9 spades left out of 46 cards total -- making you 4:1 dog against.

There is nothing paradoxical about these two facts. Once a blank hits on the turn, you have lost one of the chances that you had on the flop to complete, so your chances go down.

That said, the above two facts have nothing to do with your implied or effective odds. You cannot calculate these in general, because they depend highly on the number of players in the hand, how many raises you expect (if any), and the number of players you expect to stay in. For a specific situation, you can estimate them. But for flush draws you will rarely need to estimate them because you will almost always have correct effective odds to call. There are a few exceptions, which I noted in my original post.

gm