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  There a lot of people who have a lot to say about what to do in certain situations, but your best weapon is probably information (well actually your best weapon is a bottle of Nyquil if you can somehow slip its contents into your opponent's mint julep). Without accurate information players are basically drawing blind as they go forward in the pot. Unfortunately this is pretty much how a large percentage of the players approach the table. A good example of this is players who are working on a backdoor draw.



  As most of us know, a backdoor draw is a drawing hand that is two outs away from being complete. Some daredevil players will still continue with the hand as if doing acrobatics with a net was a sport only sissies participated in. Nobody can fault their suicidal courage, but most take risks without having any idea how big a risk it is. When faced with this situation, a player should make some basic mental math part of their strategy.



  Let's say your hole cards are an Ace of spades and 5 of spades. The flop has produced a 10 of spades, a 2 of hearts, and a 2 of diamonds. You now have three spades to work with and not much else, unless you are going to stake your hopes on a pair of twos.



  There are a total of 13 spades in a deck, so that means there are 10 cards (or outs) that are potentially in the deck that can help you. Because you have 2 cards in your hand, and there are three on the board, the other 47 cards in the deck are unknown factors to you. So what you will do is divide the 10 outs you need by 47. This will give you a number of .21 (after rounding).



  When making your calculations factor in the assumption that you get a spade on the turn. You will now divide 9 (the number of outs left that can help you) by 46 (the total number of unknown cards left). This equation equals .20 (after rounding).



  Multiply .21 by .20 and this will yield a number of .042. Just for fun, move the decimal back two places for a nice convenient 4.2. Put a percent symbol after it and you have a 4.2% chance of getting both your outs. The entire equation looks like this (10 ? 47) ? (9 ? 46) ? 100% = 4.20%. Now that you know the chances of getting what you need are roughly equal to pigs morphing into an avian species, you can do the right thing and fold.