poker odds?

[EthanH1]

maybe a silly question but do poker odds change if there is no burn cards used? and if so is there odds for this?

[martindcx1e]

nothing changes

[bigspenda73]

No odds change, you always uncount for total unseen cards when calculating odds, therefore you take the burn cards into effect even if they are not still in the deck

[EthanH1]

ok i realy need this to be explained abit more.

After the flop in a heads up game there would be 4 cards delt to players one burn card and three on the flop that leaves 46( in fact there are only 45 as there is a burn cardbefore the turn) cards in the deck to come out on the turn,( if what you say is right you take it as 47?) i know you have not seen the burn but it must change the odd that it is less cards in the deck?

is this not right im realy strugling to understand this?

[gingerwizard]

No you have the wrong idea. It's about information.

Since the burn card is unseen then you have 50 unseen cards to consider when heads up before the flop. Your opponent has two of them but since you don't know what they are they are unseen as are the burn cards.

So if you have pocket aces, your odds of making trips are 48C2*2/50C3 = .1151...

If you pushed prefop and were called so you could see his cards then now that you have more information you can adjust this, assuming he doesn't have an ace to 46C2*2/48C3 = .11968.

Its all in the theory of conditional probability (a good book covering this is probability and random processes by grimmet and stirzacker (not a poker book)).

[ThelVlaster]

i know you have not seen the burn but it must change the odd that it is less cards in the deck?

By burning cards or not burning cards you are changing what would ACTUALLY appear on the board, but you are NOT changing the ODDS of any particular cards appearing.

gingerwizard is right, odds are about information.

Lets say you have AA, and you decide to burn a card before the flop.
If the burn card is an Ace, your odds of getting another Ace on the flop is: 1-(48/49*47/48*46/47) or 0.06122449
(1- odds of not flopping an ace = odds of flopping an ace)

If the burn card isn't an Ace, your odds of getting an ace on the flop is: 1-(47/49*46/48*45/47) or 0.119897959

In actuality, you DO NOT KNOW if the burn card is an ace. We have less information, thus, the odds of getting an Ace on the flop is: 1-(48/50*47/49*46/48) or 0.11755102


NOTICE that the odds of flopping an Ace is higher if we know the burn card is not an ace. That is because we have more information.

I hope that helped, just keep thinking about it and it will hit you.

[EthanH1]

ok so what i can get from your replys witch are very greatfull, is that it does'nt change the odds we can calculate as we have no info on the burn cards, but in fact it does change the odds of cards what can hit the flop, turn and river?

as in a random number genarator of the cards online would change if there was a burn card or not? is this right?

[Pelion]

Some simple examples. You have a deck of cards and you want to deal 1 card and think of the chance of that 1 card being an A.

Obviously if you just shuffle the deck and take the top card off the chance is 4/52 (4 aces in the deck and they could be anywhere).


Ok. This time we shuffle the deck and put it on the table. The 4 aces could still be anywhere. We take 1 card off the top and throw it away without looking at it. Is the chance of the next card being an Ace

a) 4/52
b) 4/51

The answer is still 4/52 and the next example should make it obvious why.

This time we do the same thing except we pull the top 51 cards off the deck and burn them without looking at them. There is 1 card left on the table. Is the chance that it is an Ace

a) 4/52
b) 4/1 (i.e. 400%)

Obviously there is not a 400% chance that the card is an Ace since we have done the same thing as in the first question except we have looked at the bottom card instead of the top one. Therefore burning cards does not affect the odds of drawing a specific card.