"Theory of Poker " extrapolations?

[AmericanAirlines]

Hi Everyone,
The "TOP" paraphrased seems to say to me, "If you play any different for how you would (should?) if you could see your opponents cards, you lose".

This leads me to believe, after game selection that the most important things are:

1. Hand Reading

2.(This is the point of the post) Knowing what to do if you *did* know the opponent(s) cards.

Assuming for a moment that you did know the opponents cards (your reads were good), you would still have to know how to play the cards.

This is easy to do for specific cases after the fact. Go to twodimes or run some monte carlo sim, or even figure it out long hand.

But, has anyone every compiled "hand against hand" or "hand against many hands" odds of winning? Particularly in a class of conflict sort of way. I.e. Not so much 2d3s vrs. 5h7d (because there's just too many once you get to the flop) but rather... "two pair vrs. trips", "straight draw against pair", etc. At least that way you could remember the guidelines while actually at the table.

After all, if I don't know what the correct play is, even if the game was played cards face up, I don't really know what I'm doing, do I ?!?!

Seems like truly basic info that should be figured out and maybe should already be publishes and I just haven't found it yet.

Granted, I could go looking through all my poker books and start to compile a draft list. Many of the books I have show "favorite vrs. dog" odds for various situations. For example, I believe I saw that one match up that indicated AA vrs. KK, made KK a 4 to 1 shot. Knowing that in advance would let me say, "Geez he's probably go AA, but the pot *really* is/is not big enough for that situation."

The hard part to me seems to be determining the most frequent conflicts, so you could start with the most meaningful ones.

Let me know what y'all think.

(I think there's value in cataloging as many useable rock solid facts about the game as possible.)

Sincerely,
AA

[pudley4]

This is pretty much what you do when you figure out your number of outs and then determine the pot odds you are getting.

For example, if I have 2 pair on the turn and I put my opponent on a straight, I know there are 4 cards that can help me (out of 44 cards remaining), so my odds are 10-1 against making my hand and winning.

If I have top pair on the flop, but I put my opponent on 2 pair, my outs will depend on which 2 pair he has - I could be anywhere from a 1.8 - 1 favorite (K [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] Q [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] vs J [img]/forums/images/icons/diamond.gif[/img] T [img]/forums/images/icons/club.gif[/img] , board is K [img]/forums/images/icons/club.gif[/img] J [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] T [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] ) to a 110 - 1 dog (K [img]/forums/images/icons/diamond.gif[/img] 2 [img]/forums/images/icons/club.gif[/img] vs K [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] Q [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] , board is K [img]/forums/images/icons/heart.gif[/img] Q [img]/forums/images/icons/heart.gif[/img] 8 [img]/forums/images/icons/spade.gif[/img] )

[tewall]

You raise a good point, about the importance of knowing how to play the cards. While it's helpful to know your probabilities of success against a given hand, this alone cannot tell you the proper way of playing your cards as this is dependent on your opponent's play.

[AmericanAirlines]

Hi Tewall,
I agree, it doesn't tell me how to play, in the sense of maximizing profit. But it certainly would tell me when there's not enough in the pot to continue.

I believe the sort of data I'm talking about would be the starting point of strategy, because it would represent the actual mathematical facts. Hence the profit potential.

From there one should be able to decide what the correct action in a given situation would be.

For example, "You're the dog?"... try to play cheap if the pot odds are there. "You're the favorite?"... try to maximize the pot.

But if you really don't know what situation you're in... you're guessing... or going by reccomendations you read/heard somewhere... and don't know if they are true or not.

So ultimately, I'm saying that the objective data is the absolute starting point, ground zero. Then reading hands to try to figure out what objective situation your are in is next. Then the "Play the Player" stuff is needed to achieve the goal that the Hand vrs. Hand odds dictate you are after.

Sincerely,
AA

[tewall]

I agree with all of this.

The FTOP is all about inducing mistakes. One way of going about your analysis is to consider the value of mistakes. For example, in a heads up situation chasing with 6 outs is a small mistake at worst, chasing with 3 outs is a fairly bad mistake, folding when you have the best of it and your opponent has 6 outs is very bad and folding with the best of it and your opponent has 3 outs is terrible. This would mean, for example, that folding a hand like 88 when your opponent holds A7 would be a terrible mistake (assuming a flop that missed both of you).

Some mistakes are worse than others. Think about situations where you can induce your opponents to make the bad mistakes and improve your chances of avoiding them.

[AmericanAirlines]

Hi Tewall,
Certainly seems valid. First step is to know what a mistake is. So I'm still stuck trying to know what is/is not correct. So I'd still need to have the basic knowledge of what I should do when my read of the opponents hand is 100% correct.

Any thoughts on that?

Seems like it's a question of totaling your winning outs vrs. his winning outs. Or stated another way, knowing the odds of winning in situation X. If the odds are totally your way, perhaps slowplaying is correct. If they are little closer, raising... If your the dog, go for the cheap play.

'course you have to throw in the occasional bluff or semi-bluff when it presents itself to be not predictable.

But I find myself coming back to feeling the need to know the actual odds of various classes of common hand conflicts. And worse yet, trying to figure out what those classes are!

Guess I should get Wilson's TTH and start running simulations or something. You probably couldn't come up with a "Poker Basic Strategy" like 21, but you could come up with basic strategies for typical situations.

Sounds to me like we need two or three threads or forums:
1. Hand Reading, 2. Odds of Winning, 3. Deceptive Plays

Perhaps some others as well, broken out along the lines of strategic issues/considerations similar to the above 3.

Sincerely,
AA

[AmericanAirlines]

Hi Pudley4,
So do you do this in real time, or do did you figure out common scenarios away from the table?

The mechanics of determining an answer for a particular situation aren't lost on me. However, doing it fast at the table is.

I was hoping that common situations were published already.
Otherwise I'll end up gathering all the odds I can find and organizing them for memorization.

However most tables of odds out there are such that they tell you the outs/odds of making hand X, rather than winning against hand X. Then there's the problem of multiple opponents.

Anyway, the idea was to find out if the reference info already exists somewhere, of if I and other poster's here ought to simply start cataloging them as a tool for our own use.

I'm essentially arguing that we should. To further the science of the game... and our profits. :-) (By mechanizing as many decisions as possible, to leave mind share for other things, such as "playing the player".)

Sincerely,
AA

[The _Grifter]

" Sounds to me like we need two or three threads or forums:
1. Hand Reading, 2. Odds of Winning, 3. Deceptive Plays "

Not a bad idea !

[pudley4]

I do it real time at the table.

First you determine what hand you have or what draw you have. Maybe you have top 2 pair. Maybe you have a gutshot. Then calculate how many cards will make your draw, or improve your hand.

Then you try to figure out what your opponent has. This is based on previous experience with the opponent, the betting that has happened this hand, etc. Now you know whether you are ahead or behind.

Finally, you look at the pot odds, implied odds, etc, and determine what you should do.

It sounds more difficult than it is, especially once you start playing. It becomes easier the more you do it.

As far as hand-vs-hand odds, I haven't heard of these being published anywhere. Like I said before, there are so many different combinations (even within the same "grouping") that it would seem easier to learn to calculate them out as they come, rather than try to memorize them.

[davmcg]

If you have already worked this out , sorry - I may have missed your point [img]/forums/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

The problem with TOP is that you can usually only put your opponent on a range of hands. Let's say you have KK in the BB and an UTG player raises. You know that he only raises UTG with AA KK QQ and AK. So 6/21 times he will have AA. You should still re-raise because 14/21 times you are a big favorite. When the flop comes you can narrow the range depending on your knowledge of the player and perhaps on the turn you would be able to precisely identify your opponent's hand. So it is virtually impossible to avoid mistakes only to minimise them.