Poker Advice – On the Felt and On the Machine
How your opponents ‘see’ you as a poker player
by George Epstein
George writes for the popular gaming website www.gamingtoday.com
In our two previous columns, we listed the 13 (count them) reasons for raising in a hold’em game and we discussed several: (1) Building the pot; (2) Forcing out opponents to reduce the size of the playing field (RSPF), and (3) Raising a maniac.
This latter discussion included raising to improve your betting position (gaining the virtual button) by forcing out opponents behind you and isolating the maniac when your raise forces everyone except the maniac to fold.
Heads-up with a decent hand against the maniac, you usually are favored to win. Today, let’s consider raising to create or change your image – how your opponents “see” you as a poker player.
Many winning players start off with a tight-selectively aggressive style of play. A tight player stays to see the flop only with strong hands. He plays conservatively, often folding from early positions. This trait is easily discernible by virtue of the fact that he plays very few hands.
When he bets or raises, it’s because he has a powerful hand – likely to be the winning one. That’s a sound way to play poker but sooner or later his opponents have figured him out. As a result, when he flops a monster hand, they often drop out when he bets or raises. Big hands won’t earn the chips he would have hoped for.
After playing awhile against your opponents, it is prudent to change your image (“changing gears.”) Seek opportunities for bluffing. Because of your tight image, your bluffs are likely to succeed – especially if you use the Esther Bluff, reinforced by the Richard B. Reverse Tell.
USING THE RAISE
Ultimately, an opponent will call your bluff. He may have a strong hand, or perhaps he had failed to observe your tight image. (Happens!) Let’s say you were drawing to the nut-flush after the flop. The turn doesn’t help.
Now heads-up against a loose player, after you check, he bets. You raise! Shout it out loud and clear. With the river card yet to be dealt, it’s a semi-bluff. But it could be more than that. . .
The river card doesn’t help your hand. All you have is four-to-a big-flush! Because you check-raised on the turn, your opponent checks to you. Your best chance of winning that pot is to bluff on the river. Unfortunately, your opponent calls and takes the pot.
Yes, you lost that pot. But when you turn up your holecards, all of the players at your table are anxious to see what you check-raised with and then bet on the river. Your image has just changed. Now they know that you are likely to bluff!
How does that “new image” work to your advantage? The next time you have caught a monster hand, your opponents are more likely to call your bets and raises. As a result, you will get paid off when you make the winning hands. That raise on the turn was a sound investment.
USING NEW IMAGE
Example: With pocket queens, you raise from a middle position. Three opponents including the big blind call. The flop brings a third queen, giving you a big set. The queen is the highest card on a rainbow board (no suited cards).
Before changing your image from tight to deceptive (likely to bluff), your bet on the flop would likely be greeted with all your opponents folding, leaving you with a tiny pot. But, because of your “new” image, earned by your check-raise a few hands earlier, opponents with small/medium pairs and three cards to a straight or flush, will call your bet.
Furthermore, if an early-position opponent bets and is called, your raise is bound to be called – thereby building the pot for you (hopefully). With a big set on the flop, you are a huge favorite to take the pot at the showdown.
(“The Engineer” is a noted author and teacher of poker at the Claude Pepper Sr. Citizen Center and at West Los Angeles College. Last year, he received the Senior Citizen Volunteer-of-the-Year Award from the Westside Optimists and can be reached by e-mail at geps222@msn.com.)
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Turning calculations into poker victories
by Elliot Frome
Read more from Elliot and others at the excellent gaming website www.gamingtoday.com
I’ve spent the last couple of weeks trying to get the beginners among you to make a relatively simple adjustment to your strategy. It involves four relatively common hands – high pair, 4-card flush, low pair and 4-card straight.
As I explained last week, they are played in this order because of their expected values. This week, I will walk through the calculation of the expected values for each of these hands.
HIGH PAIR
We start with the easy one first. It is easy because EVERY high pair has exactly the same Expected Value (EV). Since we already have a pair of jacks or better, we don’t have to worry about what are the specific cards discarded as they cannot help the hand nor interfere with other hands being formed.
When dealt a high pair, we will draw three cards. There are 16,215 combinations we can then draw from the remaining 47 cards in the deck (47 choose 3). Let’s look at the results of all of these draws:
45 will result in a four of a kind paying 25 each for a total of 1,125.
165 will result in a full house paying nine each for a total of 1,485.
1,854 will result in a three of a kind paying three each for a total of 5,562.
2,592 will result in a two pair paying two each for a total of 5,184.
11,559 will result in a high pair paying one each for a total of: 11,559.
The Grand Total is 24,915.
We divide the grand total by the number of combinations to arrive at the Expected Value of 1.5365. Every high pair has this exact EV. By itself, this number means relatively little in terms of our strategy.
Yes, it does tell us that we can expect to win about 1.5 units back when we have a high pair, on average, but it doesn’t tell us if we should play a 4-card flush or a high pair when we have both.
LOW PAIR
This will generate very similar results to our high pair. The only (and very BIG) difference is that all of those high pair hands at the end will now end up as low pairs and pay nothing. Thus, we will have a grand total of only 13,356, which when divided by 16,215 gives us an Expected Value of 0.8237.
4-CARD FLUSH / STRAIGHT
The 4-card flush and the 4-card straight each have 47 possible draws. The flush can result in nine flushes paying six each – for a total of 54.
The straight (NOT INSIDE) can result in eight possible straights paying four each for a total of 32. However, depending on how many high cards each has, it may be possible to wind up with a high pair as well.
For each high card that is in the 4-card flush or 4-card straight, three additional hands can wind up as a high pair instead of a losing hand. These additional three units when divided by 47 possible combinations means that each high card adds about 0.0638 to the Expected Value of our 4-card flush or 4-card straight.
So, a 4-card flush with zero high cards has an expected value of 1.15 (54 divided by 47). If there is one high card, we add .064 to this to get to about 1.21. With two high cards it climbs to about 1.28.
With three high cards – well, we would have a 3-card royal and that’s a whole different hand! So, a 4-card flush has an EV of somewhere between 1.15 and 1.28.
Since no other hand has an EV in between these two, we don’t bother separating these hands out on our strategy chart. Instead, we take the average of ALL 4-card flushes and say that its Expected Value is 1.22.
With regard to a 4-card straight, the Expected Value with zero high cards is a paltry 0.68. With one high card it goes up to 0.74. With two high cards it goes 0.81 and with three high cards to 0.87. Technically, a 4-card straight with 4-high cards is an inside straight (only one way to complete it) so its EV is much lower.
Because numerous other hands, including our low pair have an Expected Value in this same range, our strategy table shows each of these hands separated out.
So, when we look at all of these hands and rank them from high to low in terms of their Expected Values, we come up with the following:
High Pair: 1.54
4-Card Flush: 1.22
4-Card Straight with three high cards: 0.87
Low Pair: 0.82
4-Card Straight with two high cards: 0.81
4-Card Straight with one high card: 0.74
4-Card Straight with zero high cards: 0.68
It is based on these Expected Values that our strategy is derived. I’d like to raise two final important points. First, note that the 4-card straight with three high cards actually outranks the low pair – which is in conflict with the simple rule I gave two weeks ago.
While you should play this 4-card straight OVER the low pair, this particular combination is so rare that ignoring it while you work on learning the strategy will not cost you much. The ONLY way this hand can occur is 10-10-J-Q-K.
This leads to the second important point. For the purposes of this part of the strategy, ALL of our 4-card straights are outside – meaning they can be completed on either end. The other type of straight is an “inside,” which has a gap in the middle or has an ace on one end or the other.
These can be completed only one way and have a much lower Expected Value. In Jacks or Better, most inside straights are not even playable.
I’d like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Happy and healthy New Year and remind everyone to make their resolution to break the slot habit in 2012!
