EDITOR’S NOTE: With Oklahoma Johnny Hale enjoying a little R&R on his trip along the Oregon Trail to California, here’s one of his best from the GT archives.

I like to get e-mails from readers. Here is one from a preacher. (Yes, the folks in the clergy play a little poker now and then.)

Dear Oklahoma Johnny,

Thanks for the kind words.

Mike, when you are computing the odds of the success of a draw, it does not matter where the cards are that you have not seen.

They may be burned cards or discards or the remaining cards in the deck. All unknown cards must be considered in the math of the odds.

Now, you just subtract the known cards from a full deck of 52 cards, and you will have the remaining cards that can help or hurt your hand.

Example: You have two pocket 8s and you have seen the flop of K-2-7. Therefore, you’ve seen five cards. Take that away from the deck of 52 and you have 47 unknown cards.

It does not matter where they are, but you know there are two remaining 8s somewhere.

So take those two unknown 8s from the unknown 47 cards and you have 45 cards that can’t be 8s.

So, on the turn card it is 45-to-2 that you will get an 8 or about 22.5-to-1.

Now, if you didn’t catch an 8 on the turn, then on the river you now have 44 unknown cards that create odds of 44-to-2 of catching an 8, or 22-1.

Thanks for the question, Revered, just e-mail me any time.

Until next time, remember to stay lucky.