Deducting outs?

[Oasis]

Sorry in advance if this is the wrong section for this post.

Ok, now consider this and then see the question at the bottom.

You are holding K:spade: Q:spade: in the pocket and are currently at the turn.

The board is:

[ J 10 7 ] [ 3 ]

Ok so we're still on our straight draw with one card to come so let's see what our outs here...

We have either the 4 remaining Aces, and the 4 remaining 9's to improve our hand and complete our straight, totaling 8 outs.

Now in this example, imagine that there was a lot of action preflop involving raises/reraises. Due to the preflop action, I could assume that someone was holding one or more of the 4 aces. (There is already a big chance that someone is holding an Ace if i'm not in a heavy handed game also).

Typically i'd have 8 outs. But could I be realistic and assume that there are lots of aces in the hole cards due to what happened preflop and my reads on other players, thereby reducing my outs to say 6 or 7?

The reason I ask is that it might give me incorrect pot odds to call a bet on the turn if the pot isn’t overly large. And, in the long wrong turn out to be more profitable.

What are your thoughts on deducting outs when calculating your chance to hit?

Hope this is clear and looking forward to your thoughts.

[shorn7]

This is a tough one. I guess my first thought is that if there were multiple raises preflop, I wouldn't even be around to see the hand with KQs, but that is just me. Also, if there was a lot fo flop action, you wouldn't have gotten the odds to call there either, so not sure you could be where you are.

All of that being said, yes I think that some of the time it can be reasonable to assume that some of your outs are gone based on the action in a hand. I might also point out that two of your outs in the example given are not "clean" if anyone is holding clubs, so if I were still in this hand given the action you described, I would only want to count outs that make my hand the nuts and not others.

I guess the key for me here though is that in most cases you should be out of the hand with something like KQs if the action is hot and heavy preflop simply because you should assume that your hand is dominated by someone holding AA, KK, AK, or AQ. And, since you will only flop a flush draw with two suited cards in your hand about 12% of the time, you should fold preflop a lot.

Anyway, I hope this helped despite all the qualifiers.

[lwestatbus]

I agree with your analysis and also with much of shorn's commentary. There is a consideration that offsets your concern about aces being in somebody's hand. That is, if a non-club ace does hit you will have the absolute nuts and anyone holding an ace will have had a huge improvement in their hand.

Also, K or Q gives you top pair with good kicker so you don't just have 8 outs to a hand with showdown value but actually 14.

So of all the good things that can happen on the river:

- Six of your outs give you the nuts (non-club A or 9)

- Two of them give you the nut straight but the potential for a flush to beat you, especially since two clubs came on the flop

- Four give you TPGK but with the chance of being dominated OR being up against two pair or even KK/QQ.

- Two (K , Q ) have the above problem plus risk of a flush

- Last three results also have you vulnerable to a set and preflop raising with JJ/TT is not unreasonable.

So, how do you discount each of the above scenarios to calculate your odds as you ask in your concluding question? Damifino. If it's limit I'm probably going to call it down. I don't play no limit and can't help you there.

[ComedyBee]

I think this is a scenario which is complicated because it is to be avoided, atleast for now. Keep to a bog standard game until you get better, then introduce more complex scenarios into your game.

Most of the time you wont be getting the pots odds to call when someone his holding an A or K in the hole, despite the fact that 1 A from your straight draw is gone, he might have made your call impossible by giving you bad pot odds.

CB