probability and EV question

Hello all,

I am a new poster here so please bear with me if I ask dumb questions.

In the current issue of "Top pair" magizine there is a artical showing the win rates of verious hands by the number of players if no one folded. If I am reading tis correctly. Ten players see the flop you hold AA, No one folds. You should win 31.06% of the time. Nine players 34.70% and so on. So If every time I get AA and call to the river I can expect to have a positive EV. Now if I've got it so far and I take it to the opposite extreme I play 64s ten handed I should win 11.15, again a positive EV.

I have been using "Poker tracker" since playing online and have no got into a pot with anything near as bad as 64s with out being in th big blind, but still I have seen my bankroll drop at a alarming rate. I also play in the casino's and do good, not great but good.

Help?!?!?!?!

[LetYouDown]

Your post doesn't specify a question...kind of hard to help. www.pokerstove.com will give you the equity of a hand against truly random hands. Does this mean you should be playing every hand with positive equity against random hands to the river, regardless of the betting? No. People fold. The example that was given in the article was purely an exercise in mathematics and really not applicable to a real world scenario unless you were playing against people that literally never folded. You'll notice the equity shifts as the number of players involved in a hand increases/decreases...so if 10 people are dealt in, and 8 fold, your equity is dramatically decreased percentage wise.

The key point is "IF NO ONE FOLDS". Frequently your opponents will fold hands that you would like them to call with. They will sometimes raise with hands that are beating you too.

I guess the problem I am having is I don't understand the math exactly. Going back to my example. If ten players bet one buck each your expectation would be 10%. If I held AA my expectation should be 31%. So what changes in the math? Why couldn't I just call down every bet or raise to the river and expect to make money? To extend that make money with hands as bad as 64s.

If you have 9 opponents who all play every single hand, never fold and never raise then yes you can expect to make money like that. However, I have never yet met 9 such opponents. I still live in hope.

[ohnonotthat]

Before moving here I once brought a date down here for the weekend - frighteningly intelligent girl with zero instincts for gaming, math, etc.

We stumbled upon a craps table and were having a very nice run about 20 minutes in.

While the dealer was paying off a winning line bet, she turned toward me and said, "you understand this stuff - what gives the house an advantage in craps" ?

I replied that it was the fact that "seven" appeared every sixth roll and that 7 was [obviously] a bad number for the average player.

She then proceeded to clean their clock (true story, I swear) by calling her bets "off" on every sixth roll.

- Do you see a parallel here ?

[Fabian]

Here's the problem. If all nine opponents always call down, you make money. If 7 of them folds preflop, and the two good hands stay in, you lose alot of money, in your example. If these two hands start raising (they're good hands, after all), you lose even more.

"Hot and cold equity" (meaning how much a hand makes if there was no further betting, what you're describing) doesn't mean very much in a regular low stakes poker game.