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View Full Version : Probability Question - Ring / 6Max Difference


10-18-2005, 05:10 AM
A friend and I are both wondering if the probabilities of these situations are different - any insight that the community can give regarding this scenario would be appreciated.

SITUATION A: 9 Players who are interested in probability sit down at an experimental NL hold'em game. The three players who will start in the earliest three positions (they will be first, second and third to act respectively) are robots programmed to play the game in the following way: if they have ANY pocket pair (aces through deuces) they MUST enter the pot and play in it. If they have any other hole cards, they must fold immediately.

Now the game starts and all three bots fold. The player who is next to act is you, and you look down at a wired pair of kings.

SITUATION B: The earlier mentioned bots went broke and home (they were obviously bad players). The same player has the
button as in situation A and that makes you first to act. You look down and find a pair of wired kings again.

QUESTION: In these two situations, is the chance that one of your remaining opponents has a pair of wired aces exactly
the same?

Thanks in advance.

SumZero
10-18-2005, 06:17 AM
I'm always skeptical of intuition around questions of probability but my gut says that it is, at best, only a slight difference. My gut says no difference on the probability someone else holds AA but I'm not sure as there is a slight difference in the types of cards that are dead.

The reason is in the three fold case all you know is that the three players who folded didn't have paired cards and 6 cards are dead. But the six cards that are dead are all of equal probability of each type of cards. The only thing you can really say for sure is that there isn't a single number card that is dead. I.e., not all the 6's are out as 4 6's can't be dead in 3 hands without someone having a pair. And that the 6 cards are slightly more likely to be all different as if two were the same then there is a small chance that the two that were the same were in the same hand and were a pair. But I don't think this effects the number of ways AA is going to be behind you. And it certainly shouldn't materially effect the number of ways AA is going to be behind you.

Of course if you changed the robots to also open with AK-AT now their folds are biasing the hands towards slightly more A's being in the deck still to come and a slight increase in AA behind you.