coin flips
Dave,
I was having some fun with a holdem poker calculator.
I was trying to figure out the right approach if i have a read on a player as having a small pocket pair.
I know people like pushing with cards like AK, but in reality other than higher pocket pairs, the cards that have a better than 50% chance of beating those low pocket pairs are the mid-level suited connectors (T9, 98, 87 etc)
In reality cards like T9o stood a better chance then AK in the event of a heads on challenge. Obviously the few extra points are a matter of the limited straight draws you can make with AK, as opposed to suited connectors.
So if you are late in a tourney, don't any suited connectors give you almost as fighting a chance as AK, as long as you're not facing a big overpair
I was having some fun with a holdem poker calculator.
I was trying to figure out the right approach if i have a read on a player as having a small pocket pair.
I know people like pushing with cards like AK, but in reality other than higher pocket pairs, the cards that have a better than 50% chance of beating those low pocket pairs are the mid-level suited connectors (T9, 98, 87 etc)
In reality cards like T9o stood a better chance then AK in the event of a heads on challenge. Obviously the few extra points are a matter of the limited straight draws you can make with AK, as opposed to suited connectors.
So if you are late in a tourney, don't any suited connectors give you almost as fighting a chance as AK, as long as you're not facing a big overpair
Comments
rock beats scissors, scissors beats paper, paper beats rock. A little strange, isn't it?
I ran into this when I was going over some of the essays at Sklansky's site,
http://www.twoplustwo.com/dsessay3.html
When all 3 face eachother, A:club: K:diamond: is a very slight favorite and the 5's are the overall underdog.
In other words, it will REALLY depend on how good your read is. If you have him dead on T-9 may be better. But, A-K leaves you a lot more room for error.
Is it safe to conclude that any pair decreases in value as the number of callers increase? Lower pairs even more so?
Heads up 5-5 against JTs the connectedness and suitedness are crucial. Change it to JTo and it becomes 50/50. I read that as a rule of thumb, suitedness adds 3-4% to the winning percentage for a hand. From the simulations I've done, that seems about right.
Is there a simple way to value high cards, suitedness, connectedness vs pairs? Tough question, eh? How high do the pairs have to be to beat suitedness or connectedness?
Miller addresses this in a way that is easy to understand in his Small Stakes book. My understanding is he puts top value on pairs, since they already are a 'made' hand. The others have to draw to beat them.
Next he evaluates hands on the 3 planes: high cards, suitedness and connectedness, in that order. He says you need 2 out of 3 to play a non-pair hand but favours high cards over connectedness. Come to think of it, I guess Sklansky's classic rankings confirm this. Be careful with this, since Miller's ranking system is simplified for small stakes, loose hold 'em games and Sklanksy's are for a tighter game. Neither are for NL but I'm not sure if that matters when deciding to play a hand.
Does anyone have any deeper thoughts on this than me? I thirst for knowledge. Nothing beats years of experience.