[RustyBrooks]

Well, OK, let's start there. You need to count how many cards will improve your hand to a hand that is better than what you think your opponent has. I leave figuring out what your opponent has an excercise to the reader [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Also, you need to figure out how many unknown cards there are. This is 52 - however many cards you have seen exposed so far. Don't go overboard trying to count these... on 6th st, if the hand was heads up from the beginning, there are 36 cards unknown. You know your 6, your opponents up 4, and 6 door cards from the people who folded 3rd. Obviously adjust downwards if lots of people saw 4th.

So, let's say you counted your outs, and there are 15 of them, and you've been heads up the whole way, so there are 36 cards left. That means you'll hit your draw 15/36 times. I'm going to cheat and call this 15/35 because that's almost the same anyway, and 15/35 is 3/7, which in odds speak is 3:4 (3 times you hit, 4 times you don't)

This is the absolute upper bound on your drawing odds. The real number is always lower than this, because for at least some of your outs, your opponent can draw a better card, improving also, and beat the hand you just drew to.

This number is not that useful except to know that it's never better than this. If this number does not justify a call, you must fold. If it DOES justify a call, you need to do some more digging. If this makes sense to you, I'll move on.