Many players, especially us free online poker players shy away from the “technical” side of the game, the working out of odds and such. I mean doing that means doing math and lets face it math without a calculator or Excel is bad for many of us!

Sadly the fact is that to succeed in poker this is a key part of the game that you need to master, especially if you have any aspirations to play live money games.

The biggest problem is that the formula for doing odds is pretty complex and to do it in your head on the fly under pressure you do need to be pretty hot at math.

As an example:

Lets say you hold 8-7 and the Flop is 5-6-A. You want to know your odds on hitting a Straight later.

If you utilize a rigorous mathematical solution, you’ll come up with this horror:

You need certain cards to help you do this – Known as “outs” In this case for a straight you need 4 and 9. There are eight of them still remaining in the deck. The odds of your getting them later is P (1-P)Q, where P is the probability of hitting your hand on the Turn, and Q is the probability you will hit at the river. It is P (1-P)Q because (1-P)Q is the probability that you will hit on the river if you don’t complete your hand on the Turn.

Now here are the values for P and Q.

- P = 8 cards still on the deck to help you divided by 52-5 = 47 remaining cards = 8/47.
- Q = 8 cards still on the deck to help you, since you didn’t complete on the Turn divided by 52-6 (because there are six cards already out, your hole cards and the Board) = 8/46.

The complete answer is 8/47 (1 – 8/47)(8/46) = .170 (.829)(.174) = .170 .144 = .314 = 31%. You’ve got a 31% chance of hitting your Straight later.

Ouch, that’s fun and beyond most of us! However, in a table you usually do not have a calculator (and even if you do you still need to know what to input into it .

And many poker players just understand the outs, but not really much of basic probability theory. How’s this? An out by the way is any unseen card that, if drawn, will improve your hand win chances.

Here then is a much more basic, easy way to work out odds

Let us try an approximation formula:

- You divide 8 by 50, because 47 is near to 50, and get 16.

- Double it again and you get .32.

- It’s a reliable estimate.

- After all, poker players, in games, don’t require exact solutions; they want only a hint as to where they are standing.

- In this case “about 32%” is a nice enough answer.

So, in the Flop, here is the approximation:

- Get the amount of your outs, then multiply it by 4, then affix a percent sign.

- That is a reliable approximation percentage of your hitting the hand.

- In the Turn, if you still have outs, multiply it by 2, then affix a percent sign.

- Preflop, when you choose to push all-in, you typically don’t need to do this since you will rely mainly on pure hand strength.

To practice your odds calculations there can be no better way than to play poker online for free on http://www.NoPayPOKER.com, at least here you can get it wrong and not lose money as a result! Yes, you can always use odds calculators and many are available for online poker but if you want to play live you need to learn to do it the hard way, so get learning if you have any ambition to move beyond free online poker and win serious cash!

Question by GODDESSA: What’s the worst you’ve ever injured yourself with a kitchen gadget?
I sliced the top of my thumb off with a potato peeler when I was in high school. It was hanging by a thread. I wanted to go to the hospital but my stepdad told me it’d be fine and threw a bandaid on top of it. My mom came home and screamed.

Needless to say, I don’t peel potatoes anymore. That is now my husband’s job.

Best answer:

Answer by Nina Lee
OMG, ouch!!!! I don’t mind peeling potatoes but every time I try to grate them for hash browns I lose some skin.

I did the same thing to my left, middle finger. I don’t remember how it happened but remember it was with a brand new Cutco knife. I had to have stitches & thought it would never stop bleeding. That was about 8 years ago.

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

That, amazingly has nothing to do with the long-rumored device. According to HotHardware, Apple will also announce the end of AT&T’s iPhone exclusivity:

According to an inside source close to the going-ons involved in all of this, a new tablet of some sort may not be the only thing on deck for next Wednesday though. We have been led to believe by an inside source that AT&T will lose their iPhone exclusivity on the same day, though it’s not yet clear what other carrier (or carriers) will be stepping in to also carry the phone.

A definite ouch for AT&T. The service provider has paid Apple good money for control over the iPhone, and enjoys a healthy profit from the popular smartphone. So can we expect AT&T stock to drop come Wednesday? And will that perhaps create an investment opportunity?

Post from: The Gadget Blog

And we have another ebook reader! This time around it’s the Que from Plastic Logic. Just because it’s not the Kindle or Nook, don’t write it off. This device, and the software it runs, might be special enough to make a mark in the ebook reader scene.

It’s not the hardware that’s unique — although it is nice and I’ll get to that in a bit — it’s the software that formats publications to the device while retaining the feel of the print version. Watch the video above to see a demo of USA Today. You’ll see that it looks and feels like the real thing. Headlines are up top along with buttons to different sections. It even embeds the news story’s image in a familiar fashion.

As for the hardware, it’s damn thin — like so thin breakage might be a concern. But the screen size is large enough that reading a newspaper or magazine article feels right. The USB port, SD card slot, and speaker are located on the bottom and are the only ports on the otherwise sleek device.

There is a bit of lag when navigating. Actually, it’s more than a bit, but that’s the norm in ebook readers right now. They are laggy, but that will likely improve.

Plastic Logic is targeting an April release with Barnes & Noble as the retail partner. The 4GB version will run $649 while the 8GB version with 3G will cost $799. Yeah, ouch.

LEDs have really changed the flashlight market. It used to be that a Maglight was the pinnacle of illumination technology. Not any more.

Now, the LED flashlight is king. Lower energy requirements, higher lumens, less heat; the LED really makes a difference. At first, there were problems with focusing the beam, however nowadays it’s not an issue. Most LED flashlights are quite functional, durable (try dropping an incandescent bulb light from 6 feet up) and if you’ll pardon the pun, the future is quite bright.

Enter the mPower. Designed to be used as an emergency flashlight, it’s main power source is a CR123 (photocell) battery, along with a special reserve battery. The reserve battery (which is technology that the builder mPhase specializes in) has a shelf life of 20 years.

In addition to this special power source, the mPower has a built in USB port for emergency charging your cell phone, as well as any other device. The best part: if the CR123 battery is dead, the backup cell will charge your device for you. We don’t know yet how many lumens or any of the other information that really matters to flashlight geeks like myself, unfortunately.

Expect to be released into the wild in March of 2010, the mPower flashlight will set you back somewhere between $250 and $300. Ouch.

[via CNET]

Ouch. That looks painful.

(Credit: Screenshot by Gamersyde/Polyphony Digital)

Forza has it. GRID has it. Heck, even Need for Speed has it. We now have video proof, coming out of Gamescom 2009, that Gran Turismo 5 will finally get damage modeling.

Of the 1,000 vehicles available for play …

Originally posted at The Car Tech blog