I read somewhere that the odds of flopping a flush with suited hole cards was 5%. Is this correct? If so what are the odds of this happening 2 out of 3 consecutive hands? Thanks in advance.

i think i read this a little after i started playing
http://www.homepokergames.com/odds.php
117.79 to 1(%.84) are your odds of flopping a flush.
5% is incorrect which is the reason why playing hands like 92 suited is not a good idea. Better off playing hands like 56 suited so you have the straight draws to go along with your flush draw.

Think about it. If that were true, 20% of flops would have to be all of one suit. You know that doesn't happen.

The chance of flopping a flush with suited hole cards is C(11,3) / C(50,3) = 165 / 19,600 = 0.84%. The chance of doing is two out of three hands is 0.021% or 1 / 4,743, given that you have suited pocket cards. If you play 10,000 hands of poker, and play every suited hand you get, it's about even money whether you'll flop two flushes with either zero or one set of suited pocket cards in between.

I'm having a hard time seeing where you got 20%. OP quotes 5% or 1 out of 20 flops not 1 out of 5 flops. Thanks for the calculations. It's definately true when they say ignorance is bliss. Asking for the numbers and seeing the results really makes me despise internet poker. I don't play internet poker very much and when I do it's mainly satellites where tracking my hand history shows that I see on average maybe 150 hands in a single tourney. Yet all my posts about probability show that these scenarios happen way more than they mathematically should.

Aaron is right.

If the probability of flopping a flush is 5% as you say, then the probability of flopping a flush in "any" of the 4 suits is 4*5% = 20%

Aaron has pointed out why this doesn't make much sense. Do you see a monotone flop (in any suit) 1 in 5 times?

Ohhhh, now I see. Gothca. Thanks for clarifying. Sometimes things are so obvious they're not.lol

I have a favor to ask if anyone is willing. Could someone break down Aaron's calculation explaining what C is and what all the numbers represent? That way in the future I might be able to do these calculations myself instead of constantly bothering people for the results. Thanks in advance.

The "c notation" is used for counting purposes where we disregard order. For instance nCr is the number of ways to select r objects from n objects. 11c3 is the number of ways to select 3 suited cards from a set of 11 suited cards. The total number of flops with disregard to order is 50C3 = 19,600. Divide and we get our answer.

There is an alternative solution which may be easier to understand.

Label the flop cards f1, f2, f3

The probability that f1 is a suited card in the suit that you hold pre-flop is 11/50.
The probability that f2 is a suited card given that the first card is also in the same suit is 10/49.
The probability that f3 is a suited card given that the first two cards are suited is 9/48

Multiply and we get 11/50*10/49*9/48 ~ 0.008418 or 0.8418%

Well onetime, i turned over TT and so did my opponent.. I hit 4 Clubs on board for flush.. I laughed.. I'm not one much for the exact probability.