What if you knew everyone's hole cards?

Suppose you are an above-average player in WPT-type, four-day, 500-or-so player, NLH events. Suppose your expected win rate is about once in 250 events (twice the average).

Now suppose that you are given the magical power of knowing the hole cards of every player at your table for every hand throughout the tournament. Nobody else has this power and nobody knows that you have it. What would this do to your expected win rate?

I've thought about this off & on for a few days without coming up with an elegant or comprehensive way to approach it. My instinct is that you'd increase your chances by a factor in the 3-5 range. The most common recurring benefits would be to keep you on the proper side of all the 55/45-type decisions that arise, and to make you bluff-proof. Only rarely would you get away from the wrong side of set-over-set or know to call with your pocket 3s when someone move-in preflop with pocket 2s.

Does anyone have any thoughts on how to approach this, or any intuitive reactions about the likely answer?

Bob Feduniak <font color="white"> </font>

[TheBlueMonster]

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The most common recurring benefits would be to keep you on the proper side of all the 55/45-type decisions that arise, and to make you bluff-proof.

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Post flop this gift would be fantastic.
But would you fold your JJ everytime you knew someone was holding a bigger pair just ot be on the "safe" side?

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Post flop this gift would be fantastic.
But would you fold your JJ everytime you knew someone was holding a bigger pair just ot be on the "safe" side?

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This goes to a point that I don't think anyone has addressed yet. This ability would be exceptionally useful postflop. So you simply try to see absolutely the maximum number of flops possible without committing a significant % of your chips preflop. Limp in late position with 72o every time. Call even moderate raises with any 2. Don't worry at all about being dominated. Then once you see the flop you can steal from others who have missed their hands, which will easily make up for the chip spewing preflop, and get absolutely maximum value whenever you have the best hand. You can do this with very little risk by structuring betting amounts so that you're never committing more than half your stack or so until the river unless your opponent is drawing dead...even if this means folding a better hand early when it's likely that your opponent will put you all in before the river. You'd almost never get checkraised or 3-bet except on pure bluffs, so you'd have tremendous control of pot size.

Of course this becomes less useful as blinds escalate and preflop betting gets significant fractions of your stack in. But by then you should have so many chips that you can gamble a little in good spots.

Great futures trading book with Fink!

Don't ask me how but I played someone heads up no limit 5 card stud and I knew what his hole cards were every single hand. I beat him in 30 out of 30 freeze outs.

Now if I knew everyone's hole cards in a no limit tourney, I would probably in the money every time if the top 10 percent were paid. The main thing is to avoid big all in confrontations in the early streets (this would nullify the importance of short term luck). And to find a way to have the big money in only at the river where you can no longer get outdrawn.

[jcmack13]

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Don't ask me how but I played someone heads up no limit 5 card stud and I knew what his hole cards were every single hand. I beat him in 30 out of 30 freeze outs.

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If you guys weren't doing this together as a type of poker experiment, then I know how. You are a miserable, low, cheating little f--k. If you were playing for money you should get your ass kicked and give five times the money back.

We were playing for push-ups. He wound up doing 600 of them in one afternoon. Hahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!

What made him even more stupid was that he was a blackjack dealer. He should have caught me. Hahahahahahahaha!!!!!!! [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img] [img]/images/graemlins/laugh.gif[/img]

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Great futures trading book with Fink!

Thanks for the nice comment, though I'm afraid the book has gotten pretty dated.

Are you writing a poker book? My guess is that you would probably have to be one of the best poker theorists around given the high quality of your futures book and your long experience playing poker.

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Great futures trading book with Fink![ QUOTE ]



Thanks for the nice comment, though I'm afraid the book has gotten pretty dated.

[SossMan]

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Great futures trading book with Fink![ QUOTE ]



Thanks for the nice comment, though I'm afraid the book has gotten pretty dated.

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0/2, bob. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]