DaPhunk

Originally posted by DaPhunk
Thanks! I downloaded Equilab and the "equity tester" seems quite interesting to me. I already seem to be able to make pretty close guesses to Equity but if I could work out how to make some sort of training system I may be able to improve the speed of my calculations for multi-tabling.

Now I can make an update I think I shall simply copy a short "intro" article I made for my personal little poker game book. The follow up article is to do with sizings and has some very general spots in which to start adjusting your ranges. (followed by 5bet shoving math)

My Intro to 3bet/4bet and 5bet play

Before talking about 4bets and 5bets I should first mention 3bets.

Why do we 3bet?

Here are 3 possible reasons;

• We want to get value with a great hand
• We want to resteal a player who opens and folds a lot
• We want to change the momentum and make an opponent fold postflop

When we simplify, this becomes two reasons. We 3bet for value or as a bluff/semibluff. The wider our villain raises preflop, the wider we will want to 3bet him. However we have to remember something;

We should think not only of increasing our value-range, but also our bluff-range. (or vice versa) Otherwise we can start becoming unbalanced and potentially exploitable.

4betting;

We should now think about basing our 4-betting on the same two simplified reasons we came up with for 3betting;

• For Value
• As a bluff/semibluff

Again, the wider villains range becomes, the more we will want to widen our range. When we widen our range we should add both semibluff hands and value hands.

5betting

When 5betting we can follow the same reasons as we did with 4betting.

Note that if we have 100bb stacks a 5bet is normally going to be an All-in. This will change the basic profit equation for restealing as all hands have some equity to win.

Expected value of 5bet =
Amount in pot to steal * %time he folds
+ (All-in potsize/2) * %time we win
- Amount we risk with 5bet * %of the time we lose when called

Right, that's it for today, See you next week for the next homework!

Good work,

Keep us posted on your progress and don't forget to post hands in the evaluation forums.

Best of luck

Thanks I am reading all sorts of books at the moment and its a bit distracting. Will try to re-commit to coming here once a week and post something interesting.

Originally posted by DaPhunk
Thanks I am reading all sorts of books at the moment and its a bit distracting. Will try to re-commit to coming here once a week and post something interesting.

Why not post something interesting from a book that has you puzzled

Maybe we start an interesting discussion.

In the meantime don't forget to keep playing the game, because that's really one of the most important ways to continue improving your game.

Homework #4

Question 1: Post a hand for evaluation in which you have the initiative postflop.

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=223814

Question 2: Evaluate one of the hands submitted by other members.

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=1250663#post1250663

Question 3: You are on the flop with K :spade:Q :diamond:. The board cards are J :spade:, 9 :club:, 8 :heart:, and your opponent holds 7 :club:7 :heart:. What is your equity in this spot?

Answer part 1- I'm going to guess what our equity is;

3 Q outs, 3 K outs, 4, T outs. We also win if the board pairs twice but i'm not sure what that does to our equity.

Using the multiply trick, 10 to 11 outs is going to mean roughly 22.5% chance to hit by turn and roughly 42% by river. Not knowing the exact numbers I'm going to guess we have somewhere between 40% and 43% equity.

Answer part 2- Equilab it up!

Equity Win Tie Loss Hand
Player 1: 41.414 % 41.414 % 0.000 % 58.586 % KsQd
Player 2: 58.586 % 58.586 % 0.000 % 41.414 % 7h7c

There we go, 41.41% equity for KQo on that flop. Good to know that I was close

Right, so that's done with Homework #4. I just wrote a chapter in my book on turn barelling that followed on from c-betting so the lesson was a sort of unofficial recap ♦

Originally posted by DaPhunk
Homework #4

Question 1: Post a hand for evaluation in which you have the initiative postflop.

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?threadid=223814

Question 2: Evaluate one of the hands submitted by other members.

https://forums.pokerstrategy.com/forum/thread.php?postid=1250663#post1250663

Question 3: You are on the flop with K :spade:Q :diamond:. The board cards are J :spade:, 9 :club:, 8 :heart:, and your opponent holds 7 :club:7 :heart:. What is your equity in this spot?

Answer part 1- I'm going to guess what our equity is;

3 Q outs, 3 K outs, 4, T outs. We also win if the board pairs twice but i'm not sure what that does to our equity.

Using the multiply trick, 10 to 11 outs is going to mean roughly 22.5% chance to hit by turn and roughly 42% by river. Not knowing the exact numbers I'm going to guess we have somewhere between 40% and 43% equity.

Answer part 2- Equilab it up!

Equity Win Tie Loss Hand
Player 1: 41.414 % 41.414 % 0.000 % 58.586 % KsQd
Player 2: 58.586 % 58.586 % 0.000 % 41.414 % 7h7c

There we go, 41.41% equity for KQo on that flop. Good to know that I was close

Right, so that's done with Homework #4. I just wrote a chapter in my book on turn barelling that followed on from c-betting so the lesson was a sort of unofficial recap ♦

Looks good.

Your hand was responded to a while ago and your equilab calculation looks fine. Good guess as well.

Would you be able to now calculate that type of equity while playing (let's say under 15 seconds)?

When playing we're against a range its more tricky to be sure on our outs, but its pretty quick and easy to guess in many circumstances and do the multiplication for the equity

The difficult bit for me is working out the pot and implied odds in % form. I don't have an easy trick for quickly working out how much additional money i'd need to make on river for a call to be +ev.

Edit; I have been prompted to make a short strategy post on my aforementioned short-comings, so without further ado;

Ingame Poker Math! Developing speed tricks.

The Scenario

You may have had the following situation before in game; You flop a good hand like a set or TPTK Cbet and get called, on the turn you bet and get check-raised.

The easy part is working out your outs. With a set your villain check/raised a completed flush on turn and with TPTK the board is dry and he Check/raised a two-pair. Set has up to 10 outs for FH/Quads i.e 22% and TPTK has up to 6 clean outs, possibly 3 extra unknown outs. This is 13% (or 19%)

Now however, despite knowing this you hit a roadblock. "I have 22% equity and bet 5 into 7.5, he raised to 15 and has 28 behind but might not put his whole stack in every time, so can I call or not?"

This was my somewhat panicked thought process which then progresses on to the following;

"7.5 + 15 + 5 = 27.5 and I have to call 10? thats about a third of the new pot? I don't have that equity but if he puts his stack in on river only some of the time I have the implieds to call don't I!"

This in-accurate thought process can be sufficient in some cases where it becomes apparent very quickly that we have the implieds to call, but its not exactly confidence inspiring. Having presented the problem I shall try and lay out the quick math shortcuts to use in the game to make things easier and more accurate.

The Solution

What things would we like to be able to calculate quickly and easily?

1. Pot Odds in Numbers and Percentage terms
2. Our implied pot odds in Numbers and Percent terms
3. The amount villain has to put into the pot on river on average to make our call +ev

1) Pot Odds

We bet 10 into a 15 pot and villain raises to 30.

Pot = Villains raise+ original pot + Our bet = 30 + 15 + 10 = 55

We have to call 20 into 55 but what is the quickest and easiest way to phrase this in pot odds and as a percent?

Thought A: 20 : 55 is almost the same as 2:6 which is 1:3

Is this accurate enough? We could get more accurate but we won't have time in game.

Thought B: To express 1:3 as a percent we can do the following;

Left hand side / (left + right) = fraction we can hopefully convert into a percent.

1 / 4 = 25%

Accuracy test, real result = 26.7%

This looks like it will help a lot more, lets recap the steps.

1: Add up pot so you can work out how much you are calling to be a part of.
2: Try to express "Amount to call : Pot" into a simple ratio.
3: Get a fraction to approximate a percent with the formula "Left hand side / (Left + Right sides)"

2) Implied pot odds

We should be able to use the same process we used for pot odds just adding either entire effective stack behind if we think villain goes all in every river, or a percent of effective behind eg 50% if we think he only goes all-in half the time on river.

eg; we bet 22 into 30, villain raises to 90. His remaining is 200 and ours is 250.

1: 90 - 22 = 68 to call. Pot = 22 + 30 + 90 = 142. We guess we get 100 extra per average hit so we call 68 to win 242.
2: 68 : 242 -> 70 : 240 -> 7 : 24 -> 3.5 :12
3: 3.5/15.5 aproximately 4/16 = 1/4 so 25% effective implied odds.

Accuracy test. Real result = 22%

This one definitely took me way to long to do quickly in-game and I didn't feel it was very accurate. That said I did deliberately try and find obtuse numbers to work with because that's always the way it happens in-game.

3) The amount villain has to put into the pot on river on average to make our call +ev

This is the number I would absolutely love to have time and time again whilst playing poker, but how can we possibly work it out quickly and easily?

Here is my idea;

1) Take our equity % and round it to the closest easy to use multiple of ten, 5 or 2.
2) Take the figure we have to call and divide by this number to find the value of 1% of a pot that would be break/even for us.
3) Multiply this figure by 100, to find the break/even pot size for this call.
4) If this figure is larger than current pot-size find the difference between the two to see how much we need to make on river when we hit. (If figure is smaller we already have a +ev call)

Or "Required riverbet size = [(amount to call / equity)*equity]- Potsize"
Lets test;

We have 22% equity, we bet 10 into a 15 pot and villain raised to 40.

1: 22% is difficult, lets use 20%.
2: We have to call 30, 30 divided by 20 is 3/2 = 1.5
3: 1.5 * 100 = 150
4: Potsize is 65 so we need to make 150 - 65 = 85 on river when we hit.

That seems like a lot so lets see if I got my sums right; Our implied odds calling 30 here if we get 85 when we hit are 30:85+40+15+10 = 30:150

30:150 in % will be the fraction 30/180 = 16.6%

Ok, not sure where I went wrong. I shall revisit this later to correct myself. Off on holiday for two nights! GL at the tables

edit; Revisiting to do some implieds examples;

1) We bet 3/4 pot, villain 3xs our bet. How much do we need to make with, 10%, 20%, 25% 30%, 40% equities?

Pot 100, we bet 75, villain raises to 225.

10% equity -> (150/10)*100 - 400 = 1100 or 2.75 * current potsize before calling.

edit: 15% equity -> 600 or 1.5*currrent potsize before we call.

20% equity -> (150/20)*100 - 400 = 350 or 87.5% of current potsize before calling.

25% equity -> (150/25)*100 - 400 = 200 or 50% of current potsize before calling.

30% equity -> (150/30)*100 - 400 = 100 or 25% of current potsize

40% equity -> (150/40)*100 - 400 = -25 - implieds not needed.

2) We bet 3/4 pot, villain 4xs our bet. How much do we need to make with the various equities?

Pot is 100, we bet 75, villain raises to 300

10% -> (225/10)*100 - 475 = 1775 or 3.7 * current pot before calling.

20% -> 650 or 1.36 * current pot before calling.

25% -> 425 or 89% of current pot before calling.

30% -> 275 or 58% of current pot before calling.

40% -> 87.5 or 18% of current pot before calling.

Seeing those figures is quite interesting I think. If we bet potsize we need to make more on river when we call, if we bet less then we need to make less. With these examples we can see the sweet spot equity wise that implieds primarily concern.

Hi DaPhunk,

Happy New Year !

Great post here.

I'll give you some points and my thoughts on the various parts of your post.

1) Pot Odds

Since almost always we talk in %s I like to calculate my pot odds in % directly.

An easy way to do it is the following (using your example):

We bet 10 into a 15 pot and villain raises to 30.

Pot = Villains raise+ original pot + Our bet = 30 + 15 + 10 = 55

We have to call 20 into 55 so thus the total pot would be 75 and our odds are 20/75 or 26.7%

So we divide our investment in the total pot that will be after we put our investment in.

Since most of us have a calculator on the computer we play poker on this takes at most 5 seconds. However we can even estimate because really 20 in 75 is very close to 1/4th (20 in 80 would be 1/4). So that's good enough.

2) Implied pot odds

There's no easy way to determine the real implied odds because we don't really know how much money villain can still put in there when we hit. It really depends on spots/positions/tables/dynamic/villain/etc

But regardless your math is on par and you can do the same thing as above to find the %s faster.

3) The amount villain has to put into the pot on river on average to make our call +ev

In your first example we have

Pot 100, we bet 75, villain raises to 225.

So that means that in the pot before we call there will be 400 and our call is 150.

So 150/550 = 27% equity

That means that we don't need implied odds for 30% or 40% and 25% is very close.

However in your calculations you got that 30% equity still requires you to have implied odds so you will need to revisit your math

For the second example we have Pot is 100, we bet 75, villain raises to 300

thus we have to call 225 into a pot of 475 or 225/700 = 32%

Thus 40% should still require no implied odds and 30% should be close.

Thanks! I worked out where I went wrong with the "how much to call" thing! Thanks to your method of calculating % pot odds.

My new formula is;

"Required riverbet size = [(amount to call / equity)*100]- Potsize after calling"

Lets redo the examples with the new formula

1) We bet 3/4 pot, villain 3xs our bet. How much do we need to make with, 10%, 20%, 25% 30%, 40% equities?

Pot 100, we bet 75, villain raises to 225.

10% -> (150/10)*100 - 550 = 950 or over 2 times potsize befere calling.

15% -> (150/15)*100 - 550 = 450 or a 80% of pot after we call.

20% -> (150/20)* 100 - 550 = 200 or 1/2pot Before we call

25% -> (150/25) * 100 - 550 = 50 or 1/11 of potsize After calling

30% - > implieds clearly not necesary.

2) We bet 3/4 pot, villain 4xs our bet. How much do we need to make with the various equities?

Pot is 100, we bet 75, villain raises to 300

10% - > (225/10) * 100 - 700 = 1550 or about 2* pot after we call

15% - > (225/15) " " " " = 800 or a little bit over potsize after calling.

20% - > (225/20) " " = 425 or a bit over 1/2pot after calling.

25% - > (225/25) " " = 200 or 28% of pot after calling.

30% - > (225/30) " " = just 50 or 7.2% of pot after calling.

35%+ - > = implieds clearly not needed

Its starting to look pretty impressive how big you need to make a raise to stop someone having enough EV to call The piece I'm writing in my poker book now is about counting hand combos, a technique I have yet to use in poker.

What's your method for counting combos while at the table?

How about when you have more time outside the table?

While I'm at the table I just try and have in my minds eye the range I gave them preflop and try to slowly chop bits out of it. Outside of the table I try to actually count the exact number of combinations each hand has so I can express things in a different way.

A summary of card combo counting

There are 1,326 Total hand combos in NLHL.

Preflop : A pocket pair has 6 combos, 2 unpaired cards have 16 and 2 suited cards have 4.

Postflop :

Pocket pair -> A set will have 3 combos with 1 combo of quads

2 Unpaired cards - > Pair+kicker = 12 combos, Two pair = 9 combos, Full House is 6 combos

2 suited cards - > Pair + kicker if possible = 3 combos, Two pairs = 2 or 3 combos, Full House = 1 or 2 combos.

When you block some cards in the deck things can change, look at the number of cards left that villain can have and you can work out how many combos there are from that.

Eg. You have KQ on an ATx board, how many combos of AK or AQ can he have? There are 3 A's he could have and 3 K's or Q's. 3 + 3 cards available = 9 combos.

3 + 3 cards available = 9 combos, 3 + 2 cards available = 6 combos, 2 + 2 available = 2 or 3 combos? 2 + 4 = 8 combos.

Counting manually using the KQ example; Three Ax are available and 3 Qx. We can count them out like so;

AcQc AcQd AcQh
AdQc AdQd AdQh
AhQc AhQd AhQh

A total of 9 combos!

I must say that I'm not entirely sure that what I've written is 100% correct and I'm finding it quite hard to easily put the concept into practice despite making up an example for my book on the very next page after stating all of these facts. I guess it just takes practice right?

Plz let me know if you see anything incorrect

I just made a hand history post where I did a tiny bit of combo counting.

See it here; NL10SH AA 4bet pot ugly flop (w/ combo counting)

Enjoy.

Originally posted by DaPhunk
I just made a hand history post where I did a tiny bit of combo counting.

See it here; NL10SH AA 4bet pot ugly flop (w/ combo counting)

Enjoy.

Looks like mbml got back to you.

If you have any other questions you can post them here.

Best regards,

Bogdan