How Callers Affect Your Outs
When you’re on a draw, it’s important to make sure you’ve got enough callers to keep your pot odds or bet odds high enough to pay for the draw.
How many callers you need depends on the how many outs will make a good hand.
Sometimes, however, more callers mean your effective outs are reduced.
It’s hard to judge exactly how much your effective outs are reduced by more callers,
but you can formulate some guidelines Playing a draw.
One example is when some of your outs come from an overcard Ace. Let’s say you’ve got an
A 
6 , and the flop is J 9 5 
.
You’ve got nine outs for your flush draw and maybe three outs for your Ace overcard.
The Ace, however, is somewhat dangerous. If one of the other players has a hand like A 
J 
or A 9 or A 5 , then you’ll just have a second-best hand if an Ace falls on the turn.
In loose games many players often do play any hand with an Ace in it, and you should not give an Ace overcard in your hand full credit for outs.
This is not a serious problem with the flush draw example, because with a flush draw, you’ll probably be playing the game strongly even without the Ace overcard.
However, in some situations it matters a great deal. An example is if you have A J , and the flop is K Q 5 .
You have the Ace overcard and a gutshot straight draw, but, if you have more than one or two callers and they are betting aggressively on the flop, then it’s probably a mistake to consider this hand as having seven outs.
Normally I suggest raising three callers if you have seven outs, but not with these seven outs.
The chances of an Ace making someone either two pair or a straight are just too high for
you to consider the Ace overcard as three outs in this situation.
The key to determining which of your outs are good.
Pick the Right Table / Picking a Seat / Theories of Poker / Betting Theory: The Odds
A Theory of Starting Hand Value
A Theory of Flop Play: Counting Outs and Evaluating Draws
The Dynamics of Game Conditions / Table Image / Player Stereotypes
Women and Poker / Spread-Limit Games / Double Bet on the End Games / Kill Games
Short-handed Games / Tournaments / No-limit and Pot-Limit Poker
