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This is a tiny little chart I made for a few friends who are very new to the game and often can't get their head around how much of a difference one or two pips can make!
Reading the chart: If your hand is unsuited, match your hole cards in the lower left half of the table. If your hand is suited, match your hole cards in the upper right half of the table. ...
6
In the end, any formulaic starting hand strategy is going to suffer from major weaknesses due to the fact that it fails to make the proper adjustments for the specific players you are playing against. Chen's formula is no exception.
If you're just starting out, this provides as good a strategy as any for giving you a place to start. It will point you in the ...
5
Note 1 in the article on Hold'em Odds elaborates on this a bit further:
[Note 1] By removing reflection and applying aggressive search tree pruning, it is possible to reduce the number of unique head-to-head hand combinations from 207,025 to 47,008. Reflection eliminates redundant calculations by observing that given hands h_1 and h_2, if w_1 is the ...
5
A small card, sometimes called a "rag", is usually any card that isn't a face or paint card, which includes the 10. So anything from the 2 to the 9 may be considered a small card, although some players may consider the 7 through 9 as medium cards.
4
In comment on another question you wanted to know what worked for you. I suggest you elevate your play rather than just look at what worked.
If you are not getting paid off with AA KK then you are playing them wrong. They should have the highest return.
Don't open big and telegraph you have a big hand. Come in for a standard raise based on position. Like ...
4
Nice question and I think the factors you are considering are by far the most important ones to remember. However I'd also say remember, as you also mentioned, the position of players who raised before, as often that can be used to some degree to infer strength.
Other factors to consider could also be (please note I know you said cash game, but I'm also ...
3
When the book was written limit hold'em was the dominate form of hold'em, with significant differences then the way the game is played today. No limit was a rare game. I worked at the mirage from 90 to 98, and dealt no limit once, to Stu Unger and another player. S&M at the time probably did not even consider much what the differences were, and if they ...
3
I generally will fold unless there is no bet to call. Investing in a bad hand generally gets you a negative return. If there is no bet to call in the big blind or it's an ante game, I would hold the highest ranks in the following:
suited with a high card A♣5♣ before K♥ 6♥
suited connectors 7⋄ 6⋄ before 4♣3&...
2
There's a 23.30% chance the other players have one of {66+, A7+}.
Yes, there is an easy way to calculate the chance of a dominating hand behind you. You can use a program like ProPokerTools Odds Oracle to model the scenario and determine the probabilities. There is a free trial available. Below is a screenshot of the calculation as well as the log file.
...
2
Putting any money in whatsoever constitutes "playing" the hand in this context.
If you call a blind, bet, or raise, you are playing the hand.
If you fold, you are not playing the hand.
If you are the big blind and there are no bets, raises, straddles, or other additions of money beyond the blinds -- so you do not have to add any money to see the flop -- you ...
2
The accepted algorithm is Fisher–Yates shuffle. It was developed in 1938 and still sites have used bad algorithms.
-- To shuffle an array a of n elements (indices 0..n-1):
for i from n−1 downto 1 do
j ← random integer such that 0 ≤ j ≤ i
exchange a[j] and a[i]
A shuffle is uniform if all shuffles are equally likely.
Some shuffles have a ...
2
That number seems high to me so I ran it. The chance of a straight flush is 72,192:1 and three pocket pairs seems harder to make than a straight flush. The chance of 4 of a kind is 4,164:1 and that seems way more remote than 4 of a kind.
using combinations
number of 2 card combinations = combin(52,2) = 1326
number of way to take three hands = combin(...
2
No. There is no "generic" way of calculating the equity of a given confrontation except for calculating it directly. For example, bigger pairs have a 4:1-ish advantage over smaller pairs, but the odds are not exactly the same in AA-KK than in AA-77. As a rule of thumb, with round numbers:
Bigger pair vs two lower cards (paired or not): 80%
A pocket pair vs ...
2
Chen's formula is limited in the way that any formula is - as said above it doesn't take account of who you're playing against. Also, though, it has major flaws in logic (why under connectedness would Ace not count as high or low? Why would you get a bonus for making a straight with community cards higher than your hole cards, but not with community lower ...
1
Given the following:
we know AA is the best starting hand in regular 9-handed NLHE
there is no action before the flop in double board bomb pots
we are considering the strength of the hand before we know what the flops are
We can conclude that AA is still the best starting hand if you are playing a double board bomb pot. It may not seem this way because a ...
1
Probability of a pair is 3/51, because the first card dealt does not matter. Any card can pair up. The second card needs to be of the same rank as the first card. There are 3 cards left that satisfy this condition, but because one card is already dealt there are 51 cards left. Therefore the answer is 52/52 * 3/51 which is just 3/51.
Probability of no pair ...
1
< TL;DR >
Bubbles and Hand-for-hand play are not the same thing, although hand-for-hand play is most often imposed right before the bubble bursts.
You shouldn't have 20 players over 4 tables, unless it's a 6-max tournament.
I wouldn't expect H4H to begin on the basis of any number of players being all in, just based upon the number of players remaining ...
1
For three pocket pairs:
One player has a pair: 13*4c2 / 52c2.
Another player has a pair: (12*4c2 + 1) / 50c2. For the case of having the same value of first player, I add 1 (there is only one different combination remaining for the same pair). For the case of having a different pair, I add 12*4c2. The space for this user is 50c2 since two cards were already ...
1
How to get the 169
13 pair
78 unsuited 13 x 12 / 2
78 suited 13 x 12 / 2
Say I have a pair match up against unsuited
The unsuited can have
No matched to my suits
High card match to one of my suites
Low card match to one of my suites
Both cards match to my suites
Pair to pair
13 * 1 for matching pair
13 * 12 * 3 for other pair
other pair can ...
1
Nothing is random. Shuffles are not random especially on a computer, when it really comes down to it is all just cause and effect.
However things are random in the sense that they are statistically random, and in theory random in a practical sense for the game of poker (or any other card game).
Now there are holes in randomness with poker. In describing ...
1
Here is a good article on a basic range of hands used in the TAG style:
http://www.pokervip.com/school/poker-strategy/texas-hold-em-no-limit-beginner/tag-approach/
Basically your range is never fixed, you base your ranges on the style of play you are comfortable with and keep it flexible. One of the best things to do as a poker player is to change gears so ...
1
To be honest, a cheat sheet wouldn't be that great of an idea simply because there is no standard situation.
You could create a cheat sheet based on position but it all depends on how aggressive your opponents are and who raises preflop, how much he raises, in what position is that player, ...
There are just too many factors (parameters) which you have to ...
1
Here's one way that it might have been derived - this won't be the exact method, but it might have been a jumping off point for Chen.
First, take the Sklansky hand groupings - take it as given that this is what the Chen formula is trying to reproduce. Then produce a table of grouping for each hand, against a set of features that that hand might have (e.g. ...
1
Here are a few thoughts that might help you get a feel for why / how the Chen formula is developed.
First, you have to realize that it's an approximation. Any simple set of rules for ranking hands is bound to have exceptions,a nd you will be able to find cases where it doesn't work.
Second, you have to ealize that it's not trying to rank hands against each ...
1
It looks like the main reason behind using the Chen formula for different starting hands was so that you can categorize them based on the Sklansky and Malmuth hand groups table.
Have a look at:
http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/basic/starting-hand-selection/chen-formula/
There might not be heavy math behind it, after all, not the math from his book ...
1
I have been playing FL! 5 card draw for about 2-3 months.
For FL, I would generally keep Ace or King.
I was profitable at 0.2-0.5 level at that time, which was the highest level with more then 2 tables open at that time. (And propably also now...)
In NL, I think just throwing away these cards can't be a big mistake, but I have no experience from that.
1
From the book Math of poker of Collin Moshman:
The Sklansky-Chubukov rankings compare starting hands based on how well they
perform shoving in a particular situation. Suppose you are playing heads up, and are in the small blind, and you move all-in. As you do, you accidentally turn your hand faceup. Your opponent then has the luxury of calling with ...
1
The Sklansky hand rating is also inclusive of post flop playability and implied odds. A simply equity calculation would render T8o better then 89s. This clearly isn't the case though.
You have to consider how the hand flops relative to villain range, and it's post flop playability. Do not base hand ranking on pure jam equity because you will be ignoring too ...
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