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Month: October 2022

Poker Calculators and the Art of Folding

Justin Griffin
Poker Calculators and the Art of Folding

Even before they were invented, poker calculators were used by Texas Hold’em pros to help them decide whether to stay in a hand or not. The owners of poker calculators, such as the Poker Tracker and Holdem Manager, stress the odds they are making in order to make large profits, often referred to as turning points, in their poker client. By turning points, they are actually turning a profit, but they also know that the odds they are making are profitable to opponents who are desperate to pick up a hand.

If we go back to that original question, were the calculator and poker room forcing you to play, then the answer is clearly no. If the poker calculator calculated your poker hand odds at the time of the raise then the hand is probably not worth raising for, even if you believe you are the best hand. In other words, the calculator is telling you that you are making a terrible hand, but it is not telling you anything about whether you should stay in the hand or not. As far as the poker room is concerned, they have no vested interest in seeing any particular hand win, so they set the odds at whatever they think the heads up odds are.

In order to understand how the odds are calculated, we have to understand the sorts of hands that are possible to get on the flop. There are 169 different possible two hole cards that can be made in a ten handed game, and if you multiply this by Data Hk 6d 2022, you will arrive at 36.6% (like “there are 34 ways to be dealt a pocket pair”). There are a total of 52.7% ways to be dealt any two cards. These are the odds that the poker room is making the mathematical equation for.

Clearly knowing the odds for the different draws out there is very important, and knowing what they are as opposed to what you think they are is vitally important to your decision making.

How Do You Calculate Odds?

You do not have to continue to use this exact same formula, because it is not exactly what you are after.

For instance, if you are trying to get your opponent to fold, one way of doing so is to make a bet that is small enough to get your opponent to fold, but large enough to call. However, if you only make a small bet, your opponent may still have a couple of things going for him, such as a flush or two pair.

The next guideline is to estimate your opponent’s hand, and then estimate his chances of having a better hand than you. Let’s say you have 4-7 and your opponent has Q-6. In this situation, it is about a 60% chance for you to win the hand, or 60% / 4 = 40% for your side. This would be called an 80% chance. However, there is an overhead in this. You have to pay out $40 to your opponent, so you are only getting $10 back. Obviously, you don’t get the whole $40, but you get 60% of it back, or $20.

So, if we call this a push, we are basically even, because you squared the odds and knew you were hand losing the exchange.

What if you had instead bet $50, or even $100, and your opponent had made the same call? In this situation, you may actually lose the exchange, instead of winning, because of the overhead involved.

The point is that you have to bet a specific amount before your opponent can call the bet. In the above situation, your opponent would have had to fold in the same situation whether you called or not.

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Brilliance of The Small Ball “Concept” in Tournament Poker And The Pitfalls of Reading Your Opponents

Justin Griffin
Brilliance of The Small Ball "Concept" in Tournament Poker And The Pitfalls of Reading Your Opponents

I was in a hand in the $300 5 handed no limit $2,500 No Limit Hold’em game at the Bellagio with Matt elbows. I was on the big blind with 8c4d. There were 6 limpers in front of me and I had limped in and was in the small blind with 8s4h. The flop was as follows:

Rtp Live Slot

If the flop is as written, this is the perfect example of a “idious flop” hoping for a low but watching the betting, I didn’t expect to get anyHelp so early on. With a flop like this, it’s too easy to be roped into a pot, I had the c-bet with 8s4h, which is reasonably strong within its category. limpers in front of me, aRaises of 2.25 gilno. Here is where the hand gets interesting.ahuge rule for tournament poker is the “don’t slow play”. This rule essentially states that if you’re on a flush draw, even if you’ve made your flush, you cannot slow play for any extra bets. You can’t make a rule whenever you want. I decided early on in the hand that I would not slow play, because I was mostly trying to find a stronger hand to be in the hand with me. at least that’s what I told myself, anyway.

So I bet $6. yes, I could have as easily called with As2s, but with such a monster on the board I wanted a call. Why? Lets weighed in the pot odds for both options. In the case of a flush draw of a Q on the turn, I was about 11-1. That means if I hit my flush on the river I would win about 11 for every $11 that was put in the pot. In the case of the big blind putting in a $6 I would be getting less than 2.25-1. Since my hand was not the absolute nuts, I figured I would be getting less than what my opponent should be getting, which was about 1.75-1. I figured I could still take away about $2. If I figured this out, I probably could have gotten more, but this is about all I could get. If I am behind and then all of the sudden I am up $5 or $10 who is to say I couldn’t have taken the pot back from the small blind. I didn’t know you could do this at a short handed table either, but it wouldn’t have taken long to figure out the concept.

In any event, this is how I have gone through a lot of hands at a short-handed table. You don’t want to go broke blind in this way. You want to minimize losses and maximize wins.

A wise man once said, “you can’t win them all” (in poker hopefully this means you can’t get “blinded”) He was half right, and I have been there many times. nonetheless, that doesn’t mean you want to lose practically everything you have if it looks bad.

First is always think about your hand before you call a raise. If you aren’t going to slow play the hand, come out firing. If you think you are behind, and your hand is probably not worth much against all ins, call, then fold.  Keep in mind, saves you from losing a pot from pure bluffs that you probably would have otherwise won, and maybe some chips (by not showing).

Secondly, never call a raise if you suspect you are probably beaten.  This is a very common mistake from people who don’t want to lose chips in a hand where they have no chance of winning. For example, you have AK and it’s folded around, so you make a three times the big blind raise. Before you act to re-raise you get a caller, you have to keep in mind that a lot of players would call this bet in this situation. Against 10 other people you are probably not going to win the hand, so it probably will be better to just fold.

The thing about these kind of hands that you might want to call raises with is that they are easier to make stronger with the right action. That’s because you are giving yourself a better chance to win the pot than you are putting your opponent on a hand. Folding a hand like AK isn’t always wrong. Sometimes it’s right to call a bet for the sake of calling for the sake of earning chips.

If you want to win more chips than anyone else at the table, you are going to have to earn them. It doesn’t take a lot of moves and it shouldn’t really hurt you to fold hands like AK or worse.

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