Hi,

I've been playing poker for a while and heard this idea thrown around by a few players at different times, basically they take into account limpers or certain types of action in calculating their outs i.e If there is alot of rasing pre-flop and they might assume there are alot of aces. When I first heard someone say it I thought they were a complete idiot, and have never used this myself, but I was wondering if there is any merit to this kind of 'card counting' as I would call it?

Yes, Ofcurse there is, if there is a lot of re-raising pre-flop I'd say theres a few options

Ace with X
Two very high pairs KQ KJ
or some double like 1010,JJ,QQ,KK,AA

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At the extreme, if pre-flop went raise, 3-bet, 4-bet, all-in, all-in, call would you expect those players to be more likely to hold AK, KK and AA or would you think there is an equal chance they also hold 32o, 63s and a pair of 44?

An example of this - if you are drawing to a flush and it appears someone else is also drawing to the same flush then you have to discount your outs (not totally , just a proportion) because a) they may be drawing to a bigger flush and b) there is a possibility you are drawing to 7 outs rather than 9. Keep in mind that you should always assign a range to your opponents rather than try to pin them on exact hands.

If you got 3 people in a preflop it's a good assumption that at least one them is holding an A,K,Q,J. Pretty common sense. I rarely see a multiway preflop where it's all sc and pp but when it happens you get this weird checkdown to the river. Flop comes like A/K/3 .. and it's like *time* ... check, *time*... check, river: ... 1/3 pot bet.

Yeah you should def take into consideration other hands (counting your outs). The way I do it is I usually deduct 2-5 outs and figure that they were mucked.

If you can't count your out's then you need to get back to the basics of poker.

The way I've learnt to calculate outs is to not worry about these deductions, and just assume a full deck, because you can never really know what people have, i.e. the suit of their cards is impossible to read.

surely this isnt a good idea as it can lead to alot of false assumptions? against complete TAGs then maybe but anyone decent will be throwing a spanner in the works every so often? also A x can mean A2 or A4 alot of people will fold this in early position. or what if its raised people will fold PP even 99 to a high enough preflop raise. IMO it is just too subjective to be carried out effectively

I think there are a few concepts at play:

Putting your opponents on ranges based on their action is absolutely necessary. Before an opponent acts, he can have any two cards, based on his preflop action (limp, cold call, raise, reraise) you should be able to narrow that range by quite a bit, particularly if you have any prior reads. Obviously your opponents can change things up and surprise you, but you have to go on what you have. As the hand progresses, use the board, your opponent's actions, and your reads to narrow his range further.

Discounting outs is something that you have to do to avoid overly optomistic calculations of your chances of winning. So for example, on a J86 board, if you have AK, you can't say that you have 6 clean outs if your opponent's range can include AJ, A8, A6 and KJ (if not K8 and K6). The same applies if there is a straight or flush draw on the board and you are not drawing to them - some of the cards that improve you can improve an opponent to an even better hand, so you have to discount your outs accordingly.

Card removal refers to the idea that if a card is in your hand (or on the board) it can't be in your opponents' hand also. So if you might consider bluff re-raising with a hand like A5s, since the fact that you have an ace reduces the chance that your opponent does. Also, it is more likely that your opponent has a 8 on a J87 board than on a J88 board.

I think you need to get back to the basics of poker

You should stop doing that immediately.

The cards in the muck are unknowns just like the cards remaining in the deck. You don't assume they're anything, they're unknowns.

Excellant time to play low connectors vs.players that hold each others outs.

QFT.

By the way, the impact of this effect has been measured to be truly tiny. It's something like a 7.7% chance of a two coming on the flop, compared to a 7.3% chance of an ace. If anyone cares I can probably track down the research (it's a post by 'spadebidder' if anyone wants to find it themselves).

However, by changing your play to account for this, you destroy the effect and undo it.

LOL

Doesn't exactly answer my question, but still good info, i often make the mistake you talk about assuming 6 clean outs

Thanks.