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| | A Bit of Maths For Beginners | | |      |
By Paul Samuel
(The UK's answer to Mike Caro or Lassie)
1.
Introduction I was channel flicking the other night.
This is what you do when you have 79 channels of trash to choose from.
You flick.So I flicked !I came across a poker program that features a one table satellite played in some cellar somewhere with the novelty of real money being used instead of chips.I was stunned to see the following hand played and I couldn't help but observe that poker is the only TV sport that remains watch able despite the quality of play.I mean, no one would pay to watch me play Tiger Woods heads up at golf (especially as I don't play golf) but here is a hand that illustrates the appeal of poker to the masses and also a simple thought process that I believe the novice player needs to understand.
Roughly (I've guessed suits) the hand goes thus:
* Player 1 limps on the button with KK.
The small blind folds and the big blind checks with a Q8 !
* The flop comes down Q83.
* The Q8 leads at the flop (about £1000 as I remember) and KK raises to about £3000 !
* After a long pause the Q8 folds !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!YES folds !Here's why this is crazy.Nb.
I know this is trivial for all you experienced players.
This is why I called the article ‘For beginners'2.
AnalysisWhat you have to have a feel for, is what's the chance you are losing.
(You being the Q8).
You are getting at least 2:1 pot-odds to acc so even if you think you are winning 1/3rd of the time you are breaking even for a call ! Anything significantly above that demands a call.You can put your opponent on one of:QQ, 88, 33, KK, AA, AQ, KQ ! (Maybe 99 on a move but….
na)Now each of the hands above can occur ‘N' of times thus:
Table 1 - Incidence of Hands
Hand N
QQ 1
88 1
33 3
KK 6
AA 6
AQ 8
KQ 8
But given the betting pattern, I would think AQ and QQ are pretty unlikely.So, we can ‘weight' the likelihood of our opponent playing the above hands in this way, thus: Table 2 - Hand weighting
Hand N Weight
QQ 1 20.00%
88 1 90.00%
33 3 90.00%
KK 6 80.00%
AA 6 100.00%
AQ 8 20.00%
KQ 8 100.00%
Using a ‘twodimes/poker' to calculate the odds of our Q8 losing for each of the above we have:
Table 3 - Hands with probabilities
Hand N Weight P-Lose
QQ 1 20.00% 99.90%
88 1 90.00% 91.21%
33 3 90.00% 83.23%
KK 6 80.00% 25.45%
AA 6 100.00% 25.45%
AQ 8 20.00% 14.85%
KQ 8 100.00% 14.85%
Now we have a complete picture and by calculating: This is (in English), multiplying each weight by each probability by each ‘N' and dividing by the sum of the ‘N's.
Thus we find that the probability of us losing this hand is: 22.55% or 3.8:1 !
THE Q8 MUST PLAY !
Conclusion Of course I am not saying you have to do all of the above when considering your move.
An experienced player would move in an instant, but….
The immediate and apparently intuitive jump of reasoning that makes this so, is buried and validated by this detailed thought process.
A decent player would simply say, there are so many ways you are winning this hand that you must call !
Clearly ‘channel flicking' proves that this intuition is not common to all and it is to those of you encumbered thus that I dedicate this article.
Good luck to you all, except when we meet at the table!
A 6 -v- J T .
Poker.
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