Poker Math That Matters

commit to analyzing a few of these each day. Before you know
it, you’ll find yourself getting faster and faster at doing them and
getting a much stronger, accurate feel for this math at the table.
One final thing I want to touch on in this section is suited hands.
Imagine a flop has come down J♥7♥2♣. You feel your opponent
would play any two suited cards. Looking at Figure 6, we can
see there are 78 possible suited hands of a given suit. Table 7
shows how many combinations of a suited holding our opponent
can have after a given number of that suit has been exposed.
Table 7. Possible combinations of a suited holding after a given number of
that suit has been exposed.
Cards Exposed From Suit Possible Combinations
1 66
2 55
3 45
4 36
5 28
6 21
When we remove two of those cards because they're on the flop,
there are 55 possible combinations our opponent can have to
give him a flush draw. However, you will only rarely encounter
an opponent who will play any two suited cards. If I encounter a
very loose opponent, and I feel he has a flush draw, I'll think in
terms of how many suited hands I think he plays. If I think he
plays about half of them, and I do not hold a heart, I'll assume he
has about 27 suited holdings. This is about half of the 55
possible holdings. If it is a tighter opponent who would only
hold connected suited cards, he could have around eight suited
hands. Be aware of how the cards on the board can affect your
opponent's potential holding. For example, let's say the turn in
our imaginary flop came down the A♥. This now removes all
77