When to abandon a draw

One of the biggest decisions in this game is when to abandon a draw to a royalty hand in the back and concentrate on no miss setting your hand.  There are so many things that can factor into this decision, so it is difficult to pinpoint when to make that decision, if at all. You need to consider the following:

1) the number of outs you have to make the royalty
2) the number of outs you have to make a hand in the back that may not make a royalty, but will still not foul your hand
3) the number of opponents
4) the strength of your opponent(s) hand
5) the potential points win or loss (risk vs reward)

With all of these factors to consider, this decision is a very complicated one.  Lets analyze the following hand according to each of these factors.

Assume you are Tom.

1) there are already 9 spades out, so there are 4 spades left in the deck to hit a flush
2) if you pass on this K, there are no more left in the deck. There is also only 1 more 7 in the deck, so you cannot make trip 7s. Your only non spade outs are the 3 remaining Qs
3) this is a four handed game so any risk/reward decision you make will be magnified compared to a three or two handed game.
4) Mike has a strong middle hand and is going for a royalty on top, however, he is currently in danger of miss setting his hand.  He will need to hit the last 7, one of two 5s, or two of another card.  In making this decision, you should consider it likely that mike will miss set.
John is in bad shape against your hand right now.  He needs two of the last seven diamonds, the last 10, or one of the three remaining As in order not to miss set his hand.
Mark doesn't have much of a hand right now. You are ahead against him in all but the top hand, and you have a great chance of beating him with four cards to come.
5) risk vs reward:  by giving up the flush, you won't get any royalty points, but you are likely to scoop at least two players and a good chance at all three.  That is a total of 18 points by not playing the flush.  If you risk the flush and hit, you are likely to get another 12 points, but have a chance of miss setting and losing. Assuming one player miss sets his hand, you would lose 12 points.  So the risk is -12 vs 12 more than you would get if you abandon the flush.  The ultimate result is being +18 vs -12.  In this case, it doesn't make sense to take the risk.

Play the K in the back and make your pair.

Here is how the hand played out.

John got lucky and hit his flush. Your flush would have come in and you would have won a big hand.  However, long term the better play is to abandon the flush there.

Welcome your comments.