Poker Poker Elements

Part 1:
One of the elements of Texas Hold'em: cards

Among the two starting cards in Texas Hold'em, only AA and KK have an dominate advantage. The other cards have a winning rate of hardly higher than 70% even against random cards. Although QQ and JJ have a high winning rate in pre-flop all-in heads-up (hot or cold), if there are still a lot of chips in the hand that have not entered the pot, these two hands will not be easy to play because the flop will The probability of an overcard is too high; AK also has its own difficulties. The probability of an A or K on the flop is only one-third. If it does not come out, it is often difficult to decide whether to continue or give up. This important feature of Texas Hold'em determines that position and playing style are extremely important, especially in No Limit Texas Hold'em. Otherwise, Texas hold'em poker will become a game of waiting for bid hands. As long as you have patience, you can master it, and it will not be popular in the world.

 

The starting hand is not that important, which does not mean that we can relax the requirements and only rely on play style and position. Assuming there is a 9-player poker game, and everyone advances every hand before the flop, then everyone's win rate should be strictly 1/9. In other words, if you play an average of 9 hands of cards, you can only win in 1 hand, and the other 8 hands are just giving money to others. Then suddenly you say, I don’t get all in every hand, I only pick the first half of the good cards and get all in. Among the half of the good hands you play, your winning rate will increase from 1/9 (11.1%) to about 14%, while the winning rate of the other eight people will drop to 10.7%. Don't underestimate the difference of three or four percentage points. The advantage in poker is often very small. If you have an advantage of three or four percentage points on average in every hand, I can guarantee that you are already better than Phil Ivey. If you only play the first 1/4 of the good hands, your win rate will increase to about 16.6%. It can be seen that the importance of the strength of the starting hand cannot be underestimated. This article is not committed to providing a detailed list of starting hands, but that will be discussed in detail later in this series of articles when we talk about position and stack depth.

 

Poker is a game of incomplete information. You never know exactly what the opponent's cards are. All you can do is to make an estimate of the possible range of his cards based on his past history and the current information on the hand. judge. Because of this, when evaluating starting hands, you need to know not only how a hand performs against a specific hand, but also how it performs against a range of hands. For example, in a tournament, if an opponent goes all-in before you and you get AQs, should you follow? To answer this question, the opponent's hand range (along with stack depth/position/stage of the tournament, etc., which will be covered later) is an important consideration. Assuming you judge based on other factors that you need 60% equity before calling, then the opponent's range cutoff is probably about 20% of the hands, that is: 66+, A4s+, K9s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, A9o+, KTo+, QTo+ . If you think the opponent's range is tighter than this, you should fold; if you think the opponent's range is looser than this, you should call.

 

The ranking of the cards in the starting hand is not static. When facing multiple opponents, the value of some cards will increase and the value of some cards will decrease. Generally speaking, the stronger the ability of a card to produce a flush or a straight, the stronger its ability to "preserve value" when facing multiple opponents. Take a look at the three hands below, 88, A9o, and JTs. Facing an opponent with a random card, 88 performed best with a win rate of 69.2%, followed by A9o at 60.8%, and JTs at the worst with a win rate of 57.5%. Facing 8 opponents with random cards, the situation was completely different. JTs suddenly became the best performer at 19.7%, followed by 88 at 17.7%, and A9o performed the worst at 14.6%. What this tells us is that the power of a straight flush starting hand is greatly enhanced when there are multiple players involved, which is especially useful in low- and mid-stakes limit cash games, where the loosest tables are often found.

 

An important skill in Texas hold'em poker is to have a rough estimate of where your cards are. This ability requires some probability knowledge and tedious calculations. There is not enough time to calculate it accurately on site, but practice makes perfect. If you work hard off the court, you will have a rough estimate on the court. Here are a few examples, all with only one opponent, and assuming that the opponent is a purely random card:

 

Example 1: You have Ah Qh, the card is Qd 5s 6s 7s 8s, you have top pair, top kicker, but the card has 4 straights and 4 flushes; you have seen 7 cards, and there are still 52-7＝ With 45 unseen cards, the opponent has C (45, 2) = 990 possibilities. Among these 990 possibilities, first of all, any spade is bigger than you, and there are 9 unseen spades, and your opponent can only choose from the remaining 36; secondly, any 4 and 9 will be bigger than you, so The opponent can only choose from the remaining 30 cards. Among the C (30, 2) = 435 possibilities, there are a total of C (13, 2) = 78 possibilities for two pairs and three rows without spades, and a total of 4 possibilities for AA and KK without spades. Therefore, there are only 435-78-4=353 possibilities for your opponent to be smaller than you. In other words, he only has a 353/990=35.7% chance of being defeated by you.

 

Example 2: You have Ah Qh, the card is Qh 5h 6s 7s 8s, you have top pair with top kicker, the card is changed to 4 straight and 3 flush; the calculation process is omitted, the result is that you can beat 54.2% of the cards.

 

Example 3: You have Ah Qh, the board is Qd 2d 6s 7s 8s, you have top pair, top kicker, the board changes to 3 straight and 3 flush; you can beat 80.7% of the cards

 

Example 4: You have Ah Qh, the board is Qd 2d 6h 7s 8s, you have top pair, top kicker, the board changes to 3 straight and no flush; you can beat 84.7% of the cards.

 

Example 5: You have Ah Qh, the board is Qd 2d 6h s7 Ts, you have top pair, top kicker, and the board changes to no straight and no flush; you can beat 88.0% of the cards.

 

It can be seen from the above 5 examples that the same top pair and top kicker have very different card strengths. The probability of a straight and a flush on the card greatly affects the strength of the card. You should be more vigilant when it comes to straight and flush cards, but at the same time, you should also realize that three straights and three flushes only affect 4% of the probability. If your opponent is a more aggressive type, you should pay attention to the summary. Is he taking advantage of your vigilance to bluff?

 

Example 6: You have Ad 2h, the board is KKQQ4, there is no three card flush, your pot equity is still 76.4%

 

Example 7: You have Ah Kh, the board is 8s 8c 3d, your pot value is 61.9%

 

Example 8: You have JsJc, the board is Ks Tc 2h, and your pot value is 77.2%

 

The above three examples illustrate how much advantage your opponent takes against you if you always hit or fold.

 

Example 9: You have As Ac, the card is 7h 8h 9h, and your pot value is only 60.2%;

 

Example 9 illustrates that if you always play hard with overpairs on the flop, it is often not the best time to make a profit.

 

The ideal result is to flop the nuts, such as A5 flopping 555, and QQ flopping Q72 tricolor. However, firstly, the probability of such a flop is too small, and secondly, if you hit your nut flop, others often have no cards, and it is difficult for you to squeeze out many chips. When the flop does not produce nuts, you must judge the development trend of your own cards, and pay special attention to the suppressed card types. For example, if you have KQ and your opponent has AK, when the flop comes out KT7, you will be suppressed. You often think your cards are good, but in fact you only have 3 Qs which are outs. It is not as good as having T9 and at least 5 outs. It's uncomfortable to have your cards suppressed, but there are some cards that are "mixed and generous" after hitting a suitable flop, and are difficult to be suppressed by your opponent. The most common mixed hand type is when the flop comes with two flush cards and no pair, your hand is a pair plus a flush draw, and no card will suppress you.

 

Example 10: You have Kh Qh , the board is Ks Th 7h , you have top pair, and the flush draw is K High. No matter what cards your opponent has, you have a winning rate of no less than 30%. In fact, it doesn’t matter even if your pair is not top pair, such as 7h 9h, and the flop is Kh 9d 6h . Although your opponent is probably 50-50 against you as long as he has K, your hand is still good against any card. A winning rate of 30%. Listening to backdoor straights can occasionally bring you a little extra surprise. What are the benefits of such a generous hand? Generally speaking, you can semi-bluff as aggressively as possible with these hands. You may be temporarily behind, but considering the dead money in the pot, you will never be too far behind. There are few other cards that you can safely attack at full speed: in terms of made cards, if you have a pair, you are afraid of two pairs; if you have two pairs, you are afraid of sets; even if you have a small set, you are afraid of a big set. In terms of drawing cards, when you draw a straight, you are afraid that others will draw a flush, and when you draw a flush, you are afraid that others will draw a bigger flush.

 

The second type of hand that you won't be stingy with is the straight flush draw. This type of cards are purely drawing cards, but there are too many unwinnable cards. If you challenge any opponent's cards heads-up, you will usually have a winning rate of no less than 30%, which is similar to the first category.