PART 1:

OK, OK so I know "it depends" but please humour me with a general answer for a general question.

Say you are playing TD 2-7, you are dealt 2347x, it folds to you on the button and you raise.

The small blind folds and the big blind calls. (Pot is now 4.5sb)

The big blind is a straightforward tight player who will not do anything out of line like raise with worse than an 8 to get you to break an 8 through T. However he is prone to calling with 2 card draws on the second draw.

On the first draw, the BB draws 2 and you draw one.

Your hand is unimproved and you catch paint.

He checks, you bet (being a card ahead), he calls. (Pot is now 6.5sb)

On the second draw, he again draws 2 and again you draw 1.

Your hand is again unimproved, catching another paint/other card that means you can't normally win at showdown.

He checks, you bet hoping he folds (being a card ahead), he now raises. (Pot is now 6.25 BB by my calculations)

You now believe that the BB has made an 8 or better, based on his previous play.

You are being laid 6.25 to your 1 that you will have to put in if you call (i believe this is how it is expressed).

Assuming you can only win with a 5, 6, and MAYBE an 8, do you have the correct pot odds to profitably draw with 1 draw left? Assume too that you will display godlike discipline and fold anything worse than an 8 on the river.

19.56521739130435% chance to improve based on 9 outs (we know that BB probably has 3 of the cards we need so we can't go by 12 outs)

100/6.25=16

Meaning we need to have 16% chance to win to break even and our chances are better than that.

if my calcs are correct this is a close call if the hand would end immediately after the draw, but we don't consider if the 87 is no good and implied odds...

Maths is not my strong suit in poker, i play by feel and am hoping to improve on this aspect. I find it very difficult to work out pot odds in game because I cannot think fast enough to apply it.

why do you do 100/6.25, it should be 1/7.25 = 13.79% that you need.

the pot before the bet and raise is 3.25 BB, after the bet and raise it's 6.25 BB

we have to call 1 to win that 6.25

maybe i am doing it wrong. i said before i need to improve this part of my game

yes I agree the pot is 6.25bb
if you have 1:6.25 odds, you need 1/(1 + 6.25) % to break even

if you have 1:1 odds, you need 1/(1+1) = 50% chance to break even

furthermore, you've seen 7 cards that aren't 5, 6 or 8. assuming you have 9 outs (bad assumption), that's 9/45 = 20% chance to improve instead of 19.5%.

let's assume bb has 5,6,8 in their hand and has not discarded a duplicate of 568 ( this is an unlikely almost worst case scenario for you). This gives you a total of 9 outs. he's still seen 6 cards that don't help you (the other 2 in his hand and the 4 garbage cards he discarded) this makes your odds of improving to 8 or better = 9/39 = 23%.
this makes it a huge error to not call even with no action after 3rd draw.

I believe it's actually closer to 19.56521739130436%. That's where you're going wrong

hoppyhommy sums up most of it.

Also you're expecting to make $ vs his river play since you're drawing to a v strong hand and should play pretty well when you miss, he'll likely have to pay off one bet when you hit

Yes. You have favorable odds to call and draw.

Just count winners (fives and sixes), not maybes (eights).

You've seen seven cards at this point. Thus there are forty five missing cards.
from 52-7=45.
Of there eight cards are missing fives or sixes, the other thirty seven cards
are not.
from 45-8=37.

The odds against catching a five or six are 37 to 8.
Write that as 37/8.

Division is a process that converts the denominator 1.
(You can divide 37 by 8 to get about 4.6/1 or not).

Missing 37 times will cost you 37 big bets.
Catching a five or six 8 times will win you 6.5*8= 52 big bets.

You won't win as often as you'll lose, but over a million trials you'll win more
than you'll lose.

Buzz

No.

Three things.
• 1. 19.56521739130435 has too many digits. Round that off to a sensible number like 19.56.
• 2. That's wrong anyway.
With 9 outs, your chance of improving is 9/45 =0.2
• 3. With 8 outs, your chance of improving is 8/45 =0.18, but that's not what you want anyhow.

I'd say you have 8 outs rather than 9 outs. Not a big deal.

I don't know what you're doing here.

They're not. Sorry, Lucius.

Buzz