Understanding Poker Equity

[Bill Lumberg]

I’m new to poker and thought it would be a good idea to just post my current understanding of the thought process of analyzing your hands as you play as sort of an essay and then let the veteran 2+2ers correct it like professors.

The only factor that goes into whether or not you make money is if the sum of the equities of the choices you make is positive. So, our thought process at the table shouldn’t be so much about if we have the best hand or not, or on winning any one particular hand, just the percentage of the time we will win (given all of the circumstances) compared to the pot size. This will then tell us the right course of action. Therefore, you want to train yourself to be able to identify this in every situation. Obviously, you won’t have a calculator at the table, so being able to estimate as accurately as possible is the one of the best skills to have. This equity is expressed in a percentage of the time that you will win. Therefore, you must learn how to add and subtract percentages from the value of your hand for different circumstances (i.e. opponents, board texture, etc.) to come up with the most accurate value for your hand.

Here’s how:

On the flop, you must have an idea of the percentage strength of different kinds of hands. Once you are able to identify fairly accurately this percentage strength, you take the strength of your hand (% of the time it will be the best based on what your opponents probably hold) and adjust it to the number of opponents you are facing and the degree of aggression they have shown so far (adjusted for the type of player they are, of course). When you come up with this percentage, you must then adjust it by adding or subtracting your expectation for the rest of the hand (positive or negative). This is the chance that you will improve to the best hand if you don’t have it already compared to the chance an opponent will improve to a hand better than yours. (Is this right?). Also, you would add positive expectation for the possibility of opponents folding to your bet or raise and negative expectation for a raise behind you (depends on opponents). Using these, you would add or subtract and come up with a final percentage value for your hand. To decide how much your hand is worth and if it’s positive, you would multiply this percentage by the pot size to see how much your hand is worth at that time. If it’s more than the current bet, you can bet, raise, or call. If it’s less, your equity is negative and you should fold. If it’s close, then apply implied odds or reverse implied odds to push the decision a one way or the other.

The hard part is being accurate, no?

[McGahee]

Uhhh...yeah...If you could go ahead and...bet that flop...that would be great...OK?

[smartalecc5]

[ QUOTE ]
Uhhh...yeah...If you could go ahead and...bet that flop...that would be great...OK?

[/ QUOTE ]

Just letting you know, at low stakes you can be a winning player without knowing all of that jargon.

[Bill Lumberg]

Uhh . . . yeah. . . either my post is perfect or it's stupid, I don't know.

Anyway, I'm gonna need you to come in on Sunday. It's just that we need to play a little catch up.

[crunchy1]

[ QUOTE ]
either my post is perfect or it's stupid, I don't know.

[/ QUOTE ]
I'd say it's neither. Since I'm not a big math d00d - I'm choosing not to comment any further.

[mtdoak]

First off, you're on your way to thinking correctly about poker. But, before you go too crazy, a few things you need to realize. The basic premise of being a winning SSH player is making the correct move at the correct time over a large sample space. To do this, you do need to know about your pot equity, however, I've found that the talk about this is rarely talked about in this form, esp at the SSH level. What would make more sense to most people on this forum is to talk about situations. Being able to reconize and break down situations quickly is the cornerstone of the online multitabler SSH player. Present specific situations, and then we can get into the in depth talk about the pot equity in this specific situation, which is going to be made up of several factors. While most players in this forum understand the theory, it would be much better to see it applied in a practical sense, and you would get much better feedback IMHO. For a more in depth talk of theory, You can go to the Poker Theory forum where you may find a few more willing participants.

[obisponator]

Not to totally take the focus of theory off of this thread, but when you say IMHO, H stands for humble right?

[Roland19]

Yessir. IMHO=In My Humble Opinion

[LowDown22]

[ QUOTE ]
The hard part is being accurate, no?


[/ QUOTE ]
Exactly. All of the percentages and such you discussed in your original post end up being a series of approximations. Its difficult to run through all of those calculations unless you have a lot of time, which at the table/multi-tabling it's just short of impossible. But it sounds like your on the right track, just over-complicating it since you will always be dealing with uncertainty.

[SeaEagle]

To echo a little bit what mtdoak said:

You're generally on track. I'd say understanding pot equity and pot odds is something you must master in order to become a good player. If I could have any tool in addition to playerview, I'd like a tool that I could feed the hand ranges I have my opponents on and get a real-time calculation of my pot equity.

Having said that, you're never going to be able to accurately calculate equity and pot odds in real-time at the table. In theory, a major league outfielder could watch the first 15 feet of the ball as it leaves the bat, calculate the trajectory, factor in things like wind and spin, and run to the spot where the ball will land. In reality, major league outfielders learn to approximate trajectories without doing the calculus by taking thousands of practice fly balls and analysing what happened to them ("Foul balls by the right field stands tend to come back into play because the wind swirls over there").

I think this forum works the same way. If you want to explore equity issues, post specific hands with commentary that says how you read the equity positions in the hand and how that impacted your decision making. The benefit, especially with recurring situations, is that the next time a similar hand occurs you don't have to do the detailed math, as you'll already know the standard approach to the general situation - you'll only have to factor in the specifics of that particular hand.

Edit: corrected some typos