Regarding recent posts in answer to my original explanation of the math behind determining your "outs"...

First, one author mistakes my meaning when I said this calculation is one of "my" best poker secrets. The whole sentence reads:

I REALLY hope that nobody I play against reads this...it's one of my best poker "secrets"!

My meaning was that it's a secret that I know and most of my opponents DON'T know...in that regard it is "my" secret. I was not implying that I came up with the formula or that I'm in any way the only one who knows it...just that most who I play with don't.

Secondly, a poster came in with a suggestion regarding how carefully you should determine how "live" your outs really are. His concern is correct and should be given significant thought, though it doesn't necessarily enter into the "calculation" part of the conversation. The "calculation" simply works with whatever number of "outs" you assign to the problem to begin with. The poster makes a mistake when he says that you should "undervalue" your hand (after the calculation) based on your number of outs, because some of those outs may not give you a win. To be accurate, what he should have said is you should accurately determine your "true" outs based on what you believe your opponent(s) likely would be holding. So, as in his example (and a good one), your nut flush draw doesn't give you 9 outs if you believe your opponent holds two pair...it gives you 7 outs (because two cards of your suit would give him the boat). So you must calculate based on 7, not 9. Your calculation would then be correct, because you've correctly valued your likely outs. The math is just easier this way, and it's the more proper way of doing things than trying to adjust the value of your hand AFTER you've made your pot odds calculations.

It's also important to note that while professional players seem like geniuses at reading exactly what an opponent is playing...well, they're not. They read a hand the same way they play the game (unless they've got a solid read on their opponent by some other means--for example, a "tell"). What I mean is, they base their "read" on the most likely hand a player is playing based on the information they've gathered from the hand. This is by no means a perfect science. So if it's imperfect, how do they adjust for that fluctuation? It's simple...they determine as best they can what percentage chance they're WRONG ("I believe there's a 75% chance he's on a flush draw"), and they adjust their outs accordingly. So if, based on their "read", they have four cards that would give them the win--they adjust this downward by one to just 3 outs (dropping 25% of their "outs" to adjust for the 25% chance they're wrong on their read) or ADDING OUTS in the same fashion based on what their opponent's next most likely holding is. This is an imperfect method too, of course...but it brings the math more closely in line. This is critical because, as you should have figured out by now, this is a math game. That's really what poker is all about.

The trick to being an excellent rather than a good poker player is not just in knowing what the calculations are, but in being able to actually do the math on the fly--in five or six seconds! Master that and you're well on your way to poker greatness.