approximating pot odds for a hand

[BeerMoney]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
approximating pot odds

[/ QUOTE ]

I think you mean outs, not odds.

[/ QUOTE ]

Are you being a nit?

[peritonlogon]

[ QUOTE ]
no i meant odds. for instance if i'm playing and i have an open ended straight draw (8 outs) on fifth street and it's 1BB into a pot with 8BB in it, 8-1 on my money, am i getting better than 8-1 to improve with my hand? in hold'em on the flop i'd just multiply 8x4 = 32, 100 - 32 = 68/32 = roughly 2-1. hope that clarifies my question some.

[/ QUOTE ]

openended Str8 draw is aprox 3-1 on flop not 2-1... I mean... this method seems really flawed(for example, if you have an openended SF draw and 2 overs to a top pair in Holdem that is 21 outs 21*4=84 100-84=16.... you'd be, according to your method, a 5.25-1 favorite which is just not the case) and, more importantly, more difficult than, say, just remebering holdem odds on flop and using a fraction on turn But that probably belongs in the holdem forum.

this method is described in several holdem texts and it does work very well. also, an 8 outer on the flop is 31.5% so it's about 2.17 -1, a lot closer to 2-1 than 3-1. with the straight flush example you noted the percentage is only your odds of improving not of winning the hand. so your odds of improving to a pair or better are very high but you still may lose. in that example you'd really be more concerned with the straight flush, flush, and straight draws so you'd actually have 15 outs = 54.1%. i was just wondering if there was an equivalent to this in stud...

[benwood]

Mattyoung.Consider this.Suppose you are playing 3-6 stud with a ,50 ante &$1 BI.The game is 8-handed.Three players call the BI,the rest fold,&it's your turn.You have(A,7)7 & you want to know your chance of making A's up or three 7's on 4th &compare this to the price the pot is offering.An A was folded in another hand.You have seen 10 cards,leaving 42.Four of these 42 cards make your hand.The odds of catching your card on 4th are 38 to 4=91/2 to 1.The pot is offering you $4 from the 8 antes& $4 from the BI & 3 callers.You get 8 to 1 from the pot to draw to a 9 1/2 to 1 shot to make your hand on 4th.Not counting implied odds,you don't have enough for a call.Any help? I hope so. Ben

[Notorious G.O.B.]

[ QUOTE ]
I think you’ve got some kind of misconception about all this. I don’t have time now though, so I’ll get back to you tomorrow.

[/ QUOTE ]
He's basically correct regarding hold'em odds, although it falls apart around 13 outs or so. Every out gives you an extra 4% to win with two cards to come, 2% with one card to come.
Since the number of unknown cards vary, I doubt there is any similar trick in stud.

i see what you're saying but wouldn't it be more useful to know the odds of making your hand if you stayed to the end? Your odds of hitting a four outer if you stayed to the end, assuming heads-up play to the end and none of your four outs appear in your opponents hand, are much higher. i don't know, i'm not especially gifted with math so i might just be looking at this the wrong way, but it seems more rational to examine your chances using all seven cards you receive rather than four.

The post referencing probability coefficients for each street are more along the lines of what i'm looking for. Unfortunately there is only reference to the coefficient for 6th st.

I did some basic calculations with probabilities of completing hands given different outs for each street and my results for 6th were similar to Doc AZ's. Once again, math is not my forte, but i got these coefficients: 3rd = 8; 4th = 7; 5th = 5; 6th = 3. These were obtained using very strict perimeters for known cards to maintain simplicity. Does any of that sound even vaguely feasible? Obviously it cannot capture the complexity that is 7-stud but i'm just looking for a tool to help with really difficult decisions at the table...

[preiserone]

[ QUOTE ]

I did some basic calculations with probabilities of completing hands given different outs for each street and my results for 6th were similar to Doc AZ's. Once again, math is not my forte, but i got these coefficients: 3rd = 8; 4th = 7; 5th = 5; 6th = 3. These were obtained using very strict perimeters for known cards to maintain simplicity. Does any of that sound even vaguely feasible? Obviously it cannot capture the complexity that is 7-stud but i'm just looking for a tool to help with really difficult decisions at the table...

[/ QUOTE ]

I think with so many cards to come the early street coefficients need to be way more accurate, like a couple decimals and you have to add the factor of how many people are in the hand. A small fraction is going to throw off your odds by alot, especially if you have more than a few outs.

But I don't think this will help you much at game speed, and you probably won't be able to memorize all of the situations that are going to come up, like playin shorthanded and stuff and what you think you need to win.

[peritonlogon]

yeah... I don't know how I got so off with the str8 outs confused myelf... however...21 (9 flush+ 6 strait+ 6 overs)is the right number... The reason why your rule 2 comes close is that 46 unseen is close to 50, and 2*50=100 which is your % and 4 is close because, in a lower # out spots doubling your outs is a reasonable approximation (it gets absurd the more outs you get, imagine 2 ducks vs JsTs on a board of 8h8s9s, JsTs outs = 9 flushes +6str8+6overs+ 3 9s for 24 outs... 24*4= 96 24-1 favorite.... which is not your chances of winning, they're closer to 75% or 3-1 favorite).

In stud the # of deads cards is not constant nor is the # of unseen constant. In stud, by 6th st, you could have as many as 4board cards*8players=32+2hole cards=34 (52-34=18 unseen), or as few as 4*2=8+2=10 (52-10=42 unseen) in a heads up match. But it gets even more complex because, sometimes someone will have one of the cards you need and KNOW it, and often you can figure out that they know and therefore that you have fewer outs. And sometimes you have to assume that the J that called has another one, which either hurts or helps your hand's chances (either by affecting your drawing odds or by padding the pot).

Also, in stud you need to be very aware of your effective odds. You may think i've got a 3-1 shot to win and the pot is offering me 7-1, but really it can be offering you less than 2-1 in effective odds. Which can be much less in stud than in holdem due to the extra betting round which in stud can sometimes contain 4 bb betting rounds.

Another important part of stud is you have to think of the chances of your had winning instead of the chances of making your draw... there are times when a flush draw may be behind but is the favorite, and times when it is drawing dead or really really slim. There are also times when a hand has many more ways to win than it's primary draw, ex. pairing overcard(s), backing into another draw or just looking really scarry and thus becoming a steal hand.

As you can see, an ABC approach to drawing hands is not really possible.

[benwood]

It's not possible to find a rule of thumb for estimating your chances in stud as it is in holdem.Stud numbers vary so much from hand to hand on the different streets because the number of cards exposed varies from hand to hand.One thing you can do is compute win percentages on systems like 2 dimes until your estimates begin to get more accurate.Poker probe contains a game where you can input hands & guess what your winning chances are & compare with the actual numbers.Using this will improve your ability of evaluating your chance of drawing out &/or winning.