Aces

Although S has now won three Friday tourneys, I don’t think he knows poker. I think he has won because he has the aggro style that works well in small tourneys and has run a bit hot. We are not particularly strong players so that is probably enough. But he is not a good player, I am sure of that. Why?

We are talking about Jupiters and whether it’s worth playing there. I’ve heard there’s a dollar-a-hand seat charge, which for 5/10 poker is excessive. So I ask the guys who’ve played there, how many go to the flop? All of them, S says. It’s rubbish. They always suck out. You just want to play multiway hands.

He is wrong and that is why I know he doesn’t have an understanding of poker. I tell him that is my dream game and I would play it every night if I could. So play it, he says, because he likes to be rude, because he doesn’t like that I’m a learner and like to talk about the game.

If I had three thousand dollars, I would play it. I’d be unhappy about the toke, but I think it might even be beatable. I know I will at least become a better player than S – much better – because I do understand that.

What is poker? It is laying and taking bets. If you are tenhanded and pay a bet to see the flop, you have, without any other information, accepted a bet at nine to one that you will win the hand. When would this be a good bet to take?

What S does not even consider is that this is a good bet to take any time you are better than a nine to one chance to win! This is absolutely elementary and you simply cannot ever become a decent player if you don’t get it.

Say you have a pair of aces. It is definitely not what S means by a “multiway hand” (he means suited connectors, ace suited and small pairs that can flop a set). You are about a 30% chance to win against nine players with random hands (and if all nine see a flop, they can be considered to have random hands; I won’t go into why but in the long run it’s a reasonable approximation). That means that seven out of 10 times you get rockets, you will be beaten if all nine call you down. Say you betted preflop, flop, turn, river. And they all just call you down, no raises or whatever. Seven out of 10 times you would lose 3.5bb; so you’d lose 24.5bb. But when you win, you win 10 of each: 35bb. Times it by three, 105bb. Take the losings from the winnings and hello! You win a bucketful of cash. Now, it doesn’t work like that, of course. You get raised sometimes. You drop it before the river sometimes. Not all the fish call you. But the key to it is that when you call a bet preflop, you are three times more likely to win than anyone else! Yes, you lose most. But you are going to play enough hands in your career for that not to matter.

Just to be clear, think of this, there is only 100% chance to win to share out. There is a unity that each person has a slice of. (Even if you split a pot, it’s not as though the casino If I have 30% chance, there is only 70% to go round the other players. If we all just flatcalled preflop, they are averaging about 8% each and paying 10% each. They are, at least theoretically, losing money. To me.

Okay, that’s aces. But everything else loses, right? Well no. I raise with hands that are about 15% against nine hands. I have the edge, and play enough hands, I will win. If you do not see why, imagine this: you are offered a thousand coin flips at a dollar a flip; but the coin isn’t quite true and heads will come up 55%. Now, it should be clear enough that you are going to lose a lot of flips but you’ll take the bet, won’t you? You don’t care about the 450 flips you are likely to lose because you’re figuring to win 550 and make 50 bucks profit. That’s how poker works. If you can take bets that favour you, you should take them, and if nine guys come to the flop with me every time I pick up a hand I want to play, I am going to win, regardless that they suck out on me more often than not.

posted by Dr Zen @ 8:51 am