maurile
02-07-2005, 05:37 PM
Ace-to-five, five-card-stud lowball is rotated into my weekly home game. It's a big action game with some big pots, so I'd like to improve my feel for it.
I don't want to do a bunch of pot equity calculations by hand, but I can't find a 5-stud-low calculator anywhere on the 'Net. The closest thing I can find is the Razz calculator at twodimes.
My first thought was to calculate heads up pot equity by giving each player pocket kings to start. (E.g., if I want to figure the win% of A29 against 345, I'd use the Razz calculator to figure KKA29 against KK345.) But that insufficiently penalizes the leading hand for pairing up. Suppose the A29 hand gets 93 on his last two cards, while the 345 hand gets 5J. The KKA2993 hand would win at Razz while the (KK)3455J hand would win at 5-stud-low. So I think this method -- adding a big pair to each hand and then using the Razz calculator -- gives pot equities that are closer to each other than they really would be in 5-stud-low. (It also creates problems when trying to analyze multiway pots instead of heads-up pots.)
My second thought was to give each player trips of his highest card. So A29 vs. 345 would look like 999A2 vs. 55534 in the Razz calculator. This makes pairing less likely, however (since two of each player's pair cards are effectively dead), and even worse, it gives the A29 an advantage by killing precisely the pair cards that would cause it to lose if both players were to pair their hands.
So then I decided to give each player trips of his lowest card, instead. So A29 becomes AAA29 and 345 becomes 33345. But this is giving some odd results, like making the A29 hand a 54-46 favorite (http://twodimes.net/h/?z=755989) over the 345 hand -- which seems counterintuitive. (In fact, that seems counterintuitive for Razz as well. Is it correct?)
Can anyone think of a decent way to estimate pot equities for 5-stud-low using the Razz calculator, or should I just work on calculating the 5-stud-low equities directly in Excel because using the Razz calculator is hopeless?
I don't want to do a bunch of pot equity calculations by hand, but I can't find a 5-stud-low calculator anywhere on the 'Net. The closest thing I can find is the Razz calculator at twodimes.
My first thought was to calculate heads up pot equity by giving each player pocket kings to start. (E.g., if I want to figure the win% of A29 against 345, I'd use the Razz calculator to figure KKA29 against KK345.) But that insufficiently penalizes the leading hand for pairing up. Suppose the A29 hand gets 93 on his last two cards, while the 345 hand gets 5J. The KKA2993 hand would win at Razz while the (KK)3455J hand would win at 5-stud-low. So I think this method -- adding a big pair to each hand and then using the Razz calculator -- gives pot equities that are closer to each other than they really would be in 5-stud-low. (It also creates problems when trying to analyze multiway pots instead of heads-up pots.)
My second thought was to give each player trips of his highest card. So A29 vs. 345 would look like 999A2 vs. 55534 in the Razz calculator. This makes pairing less likely, however (since two of each player's pair cards are effectively dead), and even worse, it gives the A29 an advantage by killing precisely the pair cards that would cause it to lose if both players were to pair their hands.
So then I decided to give each player trips of his lowest card, instead. So A29 becomes AAA29 and 345 becomes 33345. But this is giving some odd results, like making the A29 hand a 54-46 favorite (http://twodimes.net/h/?z=755989) over the 345 hand -- which seems counterintuitive. (In fact, that seems counterintuitive for Razz as well. Is it correct?)
Can anyone think of a decent way to estimate pot equities for 5-stud-low using the Razz calculator, or should I just work on calculating the 5-stud-low equities directly in Excel because using the Razz calculator is hopeless?