I have always calculated pot odds, and I, like every other player who posts here, use pot odds to make most of my drawing decisions. However, lately I've questioned the fundamental assumptions of pot odds. The calculation of pot odds relies on the assumption that faced with no evidence to the contrary, all of your drawing cards are live. Unless the cards that you need have been exposed, you assume that the cards you need are live, not in another player's mucked hand. But is this a resonable assumption? Why don't we calculate the average number of cards that we can expect to be dead on a random deal? We can use computers to deal out 10,000 hands and track the number of spades that are dealt out on average. We can then incorporate this average number into our pot odds calculation. For instance, if the computer calculates that 6 spades are dealt out on a random deal to 9 players, we can incorporate that into the odds for drawing to the flush. If you hold A4 to a 9 K 3 flop, the traditional pot odds to make your flush are about 5:1. But if we knew that there are likely to be 4 additional spades dead (2 in your hand, and 4 in other people’s hands on average, making the average of 6 that the computer generated), we can push the odds back to more like 9:1 or so. The average would provide an additional tool for calculating pot odds that might be beneficial. The usefulness of the average would rely, I guess, on the steepness of the curve. I'd love to hear the thoughts of the experts on this.