Re: the odds of flopping a set
When you have 13 outs 3 times, you can't just add your chances together. In general, if you are trying to find the probability of event A of event B, you can add the chances together ONLY if the events are MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE -- that means it's impossible for them to happen at the same time.
In your case, you are looking at the three flop cards as three separate events. Each event has a chance of 13/39 of occurring. However, it possible that the events happen at the same time: ie, the first card AND the second card could both be clubs. Because of this, you are not allowed to add the probabilities together.
The correct way to solve this kind of problem is to calculate the chance that NO clubs appear on the board, and then subtract your answer from 1. Starting with the first flop card, there are 26 non-club cards out of 39 cards total. Thus:
1 - (26/39)*(25/38)*(24/37)= .71
is the answer.
gm
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