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Old 10-29-2007, 12:10 AM
RustyBrooks RustyBrooks is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Austin, TX
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Default Re: Working out the percentages - seventh street

It's a little tough to wrap your head around, and it's a very common mistake. I once played poker (holdem) with someone who felt that if he had 4 outs on the turn, that his odds of making his hand were 4/28, because there were already 20 cards dealt face down and 4 dealt face up. I did not correct him.

When there is a card you are looking for, you never know if it's in the deck or in the cards that have already been dealt. All you know is that it is one of the cards that is "unknown" - this means already dealt or in the deck. But the thing is, there is basically no difference between a card being already dealt, and it being at the bottom of the deck, where it can never be dealt. So think of the unknown cards, dealt and undealt, as being one big deck where the already dealt cards are at the bottom. Sometimes the card you're looking for is on top of this deck, sometimes it's #2, sometimes it's #2, sometimes it's #10, etc, on average it's likelihood of coming up next is K/N where K is the nubmer of cards you're looking for, and N is the number of unknown cards.
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