Mind Games

Those look rather similar to the ones I hacked my way through on our pathfinder journey, I expect not quite the same though.

Good luck with keeping the gang motivated, it didn't used to take me long to get bored out of my tiny mind gardening; cue lots of shouting from father.
Your session sounds familiar to, only the 75/45 guys all hit straights in mine.

Enjoy the two days 'off.' ♦

We managed to get in 4 solid hours of work today.
My grandsons are both asleep.

I dozed off a couple of times.

Pics Friday.

Tomorrow I'm going to rent a brush cutter. Should be good for a laugh.
As long as my feet remain attached to my legs, I'll consider the day a success.

I was too bagged to play anything that required thought, so I played some NL 2 rush.

I had one noteable hand:

The funny part was the graph.
The $ won line goes straight up, and the $EV line goes straight down.

I don't normally call these 3Bet shoves, but I kinda had the feeling that he really didn't want to play post flop -- a low(er) PP or some broadways or something.

And this is where the "too tired to think straight" comes in -- I didn't even notice that he did the limp/shove routine -- that usually means AA, but he was bluffing

Ooops.

Nothing like sucking out to make your day...

--VS

5-Card Draw
This is the second one of these in the last two weeks.
I hope they never get to be ho-hum:
Cows play poker with cow chips
PokerStars Limit 5 Card Draw $0.10/$0.20 - 6 players

UTG: $1.33
UTG+1: $1.99
CO: $5.69
Button: $5.26
SB: $0.87
BB: $4.98 (Hero)

Dealing Hands: ($0.15) 6♥ 9♥ K♣ 5♥ 8♥ (6 players)
2 folds, CO calls $0.10, 2 folds, Hero checks

First Draw: ($0.25) (2 players)
Hero discards 1, CO discards 3,
6♥ 9♥ 5♥ 8♥ || 7♥
Hero checks, CO bets $0.20, Hero raises to $0.40, CO raises to $0.60, Hero raises to $0.80, CO calls $0.20

CO showed 3♦ 3♠ 3♥ A♥ A♦, a full house, Threes full of Aces
Hero showed 6♥ 9♥ 7♥ 5♥ 8♥, a straight flush, Five to Nine
Hero won $1.77
(Rake: $0.08)

For those asking "Why on earth did you not raise pre-draw?!?" the reason is that villain leads out post-draw well over half the time. I figured if I did hit, I stood a better chance of making more.

Boy, did I hit.

I know I promised pix of the chimney de-ivying, but I can't find the cable to connect my phone to my laptop.

I have only one face of the chimney left with ivy on it, but I can see no way of getting the stuff at the top. I'll have a go at it tomorrow though.

We put in 4 hours Wednesday, and had done 3 on Thursday when we broke for lunch. After lunch, I suggested the grandsons rest up a bit before we got back to work. When I came to get them, they were both fast asleep. I think it's funny that I outlasted the teenagers.

Peace,
--VS

Nice hand sir. ♠_cool:

Nice hand indeed.
I only just now noticed that he was drawing 3. Poor bugger.
The odds of him hitting a boat are 97:1
The odds of me hitting my 1 card are 46:1
The odds of me hitting a straight or a flush are 3.3:1, and had I hit any of those other 11 cards instead, I would probably have posted this hand somewhat differently.

Such is poker.

I think that it was in The Mental Game of Poker where I read a suggestion that when you do massively suck out like this, that you post the hand in your work space so that you can use it to remind yourself that you do indeed win the odd stunner.

Real Life
On a break from the chimney. I won't get it done today, but there will only be a wee bit left. I'll need to rent a longer ladder, but I've no way of getting it here.

Anyone have a Skyhook?
Flamethrower?

Cheers,
--VS

The Saga of Vorpal's Chimney

Before

After 1.5 hr, I had managed to clear the ivy out of the chimney pots, and the flashing. This was the critical bit, since the ivy could dislodge the flashing, and create a roof leak. Not what we want.

I then decided that the best next step would be to sever the plant from its roots. Another 1.5 hr down...

The rest of that day, and all of the next, I concentrated on removing the overgrowth to allow access to the stems. The total of the two days was 7 hours...

I found that once the ivy was loosened, it would come off in slabs.
So today, I used a pry bar to create a gap under the stems, so I could cut the stems, creating a gap so that I could get a tool between the stems and the chimney

Having done that I used a spade (I tried clubs, but they didn't work...) to loosen the slab up from the bottom as high as I could reach, then down from the top until the slab came loose...

Once that was done, the slab lay on the grass, and the chimney was done as far as I can at the moment...

As of now it looks like so:

Later this week, I'll try to loosen the top piece, but I'll only be able to work from the bottom. I'll try the spade trick, wedge the slab away from the chimney and keep working up.

Fun and games...
--VS

The Ballade of Vorpal's Ivy

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
If you're raising 45% you're raising every pair and a few no-pair hands besides.

Can you point me in the direction of some software or article that helps me learn how to calculate stuff like this? I tried to come up with these predraw frequencies myself but failed miserably

I got the idea from The Education of a Modern Poker Player written by 3 PokerStrategist, jbpatzer, TwiceT and EmanuelC.

In there is a chapter on 5-Card Draw that contains the card ranking, and some drawing odds.
I wanted to develop this further, so I used Excel and built tables of data.

Using this article as a reference, I calculated the the # of combos for each of the 7462 distinct 5-card poker hands, and how many combos were above and below each.

From that I built the following table:
            Type    # Combos    Per 100K    Odds against    This or better        %ile  
     Royal Flush           4           0       649739.00            0.000%    100.000%  
  Straight Flush          36           1        72192.33            0.002%    100.000%  
     4 of a kind         624          24         4164.00            0.026%     99.998%  
      Full House        3744         144          693.17            0.170%     99.974%  
           Flush        5108         197          507.80            0.366%     99.830%  
        Straight       10200         392          253.80            0.759%     99.634%  
     3 of a kind       54912        2113           46.33            2.871%     99.241%  
          2 pair      123552        4754           20.04            7.625%     97.129%  
          1 pair     1098240       42257            1.37           49.882%     92.375%  
       High Card     1302540       50118            1.00          100.000%     50.118%  
           Total     2598960                                                            

These combinations are of interest also:
        Type    # Combos    Per 100K    Odds against  
       OESFD        1404          54         1850.11  
        OESD       90720        3491           27.65  
     4-Flush      109824        4226           22.66  
       1ESFD         312          12         8329.00  
        1ESD       22176         853          116.20  
     Gutshot      110880        4266           22.44  
  Gutshot SF        1760          68         1475.68  

So you can see I was actually a bit off.
To be raising any pair at all, they would be raising just about 50% of the time.

So the next step was to determine for each combo, what hand was 60% of the range ABOVE that hand.

For example, if I know that the bottom of a player's range in the BTN is JJxxx, then there are 451620 combos that beat it. 60% of that is 270972. The hand that most closely matches that is 7733x.

No, I don't have it memorized to that detail
But I DO know that to beat a player who opens JJ+ from BTN I need 7s up or better to 3Bet -- and I *might* call from the blinds w/ AAxxx (about 50% above JJxxx) but I'm really nitty, so I will even fold those sometimes.

Just going through this exercise helped my game a huge amount, even if I never used the data. Even though I'm a winning player, the margins are small. I see others with much higher win rates, but I've really no idea why they do so well.

For example, I see a TON of players who call button raises with flush draws.
They are paying 1/2 BB to win 1.75 or 3.5:1 The odds of hitting a flush draw are 4.2:1
Over time they will lose money doing this. Yet I see winning players doing it.

Cheers,
--VS

NLHE
In some ways, "Nitting it up" has changed the way I look at hands.

Part of playing tighter means that I evaluate my hands post flop differently.
I am more prepared to let a hand go than I used to be.

Occasionally, though, I'll hang on to a hand I might otherwise toss.

For example:

BB called with a weak Q, so only called my CBet. Had he raised, I was prepared to let it go. OTT I pick up a huge pile more outs -- 4 Kings to a straight, any spade for the near nut flush, and of course the original 9s. The K:s gives me the Royal, besides.

I almost didn't notice that I had hit the original gutshot.
I pretty much figured BB for AQ, due to the 3Bet OTT -- I can't imagine him doing that without the A. Had it been any A but the A:s his semi-bluff would have worked.

As it stands OTT, assuming he has AQ, I am a 2:1 dog in this hand, but I'm being asked to put in 64¢ to win $1.28 -- exactly the same. (Did villain calculate that to determine his bet-sizing? If so, I'm very afraid)

I figured (wrongly as it turns out) that he would be unable to fold top two, so I shoved to try to look like a busted draw.

Nice.

Peace...
--VS

I must confess that I'm even nittier and getting exact odds doesn't fill me with the joys of Spring, mainly because I like to allow a bit for the rake which is a killer. I would likely call expecting villain to stack off the river but not super excited about it.

Is that nitty or greedy - or both?! ♦

omg vorpal you're back to NLHE so I understand what you're talking about ♦

about the hand, even if you're only just getting the right odds vs that turn raise, the size of the raise implies he's stacking off on the river no matter what, so actually your odds are way better (what gadget says). And you can always fold if you miss the river...If you think you have fold equity (which considering this is blind vs blind you probably do), you might consider c/r the turn yourself?

What would you do here if you had AQ or Q8(no backdoor flush)? Would you still stack off if he shoves river? I probably would since its blind vs blind, but I'd have a sinking feeling that I'm throwing money away (turn raise looks very strong). Or would you just fold to turn raise?

What would you do with KK? ♠_biggrin:

Two 5CD comments:

How do you calculate gutshots? IMO we have much more GSs. I’ve never done accurate calc for them but idea that for every OESD, (ex K -high – KQJT) we have three GSs: (K-high KJT9, KQT9, KQJ9 of the same suits). Besides we have A-high and 4-high GSs. So I expect to have GS# > 3*OESD#

IMO you should think about postdraw play from the very beginning, not only about predraw ranges. Discussing FD from BB vs BU for example. Standard open from BU is something like TT+ value range (even 99 with hi blockers) and a lot of draws. Hand like As3s5s6s have about 21% equity vs TT+ due to possible A out, and even more against real BU range with semibluff hands in it. So very close to needed in FL 22%. And we have implied odds, we could sometimes bluff against tight postdraw players, when we hit we could play donk vs calling station, XR vs aggressive players and so on. I expect we have at least 0,5BB implied odds overall, so we definitely could play +EV at least A-high FD (and especially AQ+high FD) in this spot with just call predraw. Close situation with AA. We have good implied odds with AA in many spots, even when we slightly behind predraw range and direct predraw odds. And don't forget pairs improves much friequently than dopers, so some ranges with high pairs could be behind predraw but above postdraw.

My notes for the Gutshot calculation are:
"4 choices for each of the 4 = 4^4 * 10 possible lowest cards - 40 4-flushes * 48-4 "other" cards"
So 4^4 = 256 times 10 = 2560
40 of those combos are 4-flushes leaving 2520
There are 48 "other", but 4 of them fill the gutshot, so the end result is 2520 * 44 == 110880

This does not include the 22176 combos of 1-ended straight draws -- A234 and JQKA
I hate them. They are so pretty looking, but you almost never have proper odds to call with them

I agree about the postdraw play comment -- I use the pre-draw odds as a rough guide.
I rely heavily on the tendencies of the players in the blinds to determine my opening BTN and SB ranges.

Against players that fold to post-draw aggression a lot (60% +) AND give up their blinds easily, I will open-raise FDs and OESDs, and post-draw bet/fold unimproved if they D3.

Consider the hand 88J95
only 760740 combinations beat this hand pre-draw. That is 70.7% of the total.
The chances of you being ahead of both blinds is 70.7 squared or 50%.

I rarely open that wide, but vs the right players I will.

I ALWAYS call with gutshot straight flush draws and OE straight flush draws.
VS a D3 they have bluff potential unimproved, and lots of ways to hit. Fun hands -- I love 'em. And when they lose, it helps loosen your image.

Cheers,
--VS

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
NLHE
In some ways, "Nitting it up" has changed the way I look at hands.

Part of playing tighter means that I evaluate my hands post flop differently.
I am more prepared to let a hand go than I used to be.

Occasionally, though, I'll hang on to a hand I might otherwise toss.

For example:

Spoiler

Full Tilt - $0.02 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: $2.33 (VPIP: 32.65, PFR: 29.08, 3Bet Preflop: 11.67, Hands: 202)
Hero (SB): $3.55
BB: $3.00 (VPIP: 40.00, PFR: 40.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 10)
UTG: $2.00 (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 3)
MP: $0.76
CO: $7.11 (VPIP: 55.56, PFR: 22.22, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 9)

Hero posts SB $0.01, BB posts BB $0.02

Pre Flop: (pot: $0.03) Hero has J♠ T♠

fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $0.06, BB calls $0.04

Flop: ($0.12, 2 players) 2♦ Q♠ 8♣
Hero bets $0.08, BB calls $0.08

Turn: ($0.28, 2 players) A♠
Hero bets $0.18, BB raises to $0.82, Hero calls $0.64

River: ($1.92, 2 players) 9♣
Hero bets $2.59 and is all-in, BB calls $2.04 and is all-in

Spoiler

Hero shows J♠ T♠ (Straight, Queen High) (Pre 49%, Flop 24%, Turn 34%)
BB mucks 7♥ Q♦ (One Pair, Queens) (Pre 51%, Flop 76%, Turn 66%)
Hero wins $5.70

BB called with a weak Q, so only called my CBet. Had he raised, I was prepared to let it go. OTT I pick up a huge pile more outs -- 4 Kings to a straight, any spade for the near nut flush, and of course the original 9s. The K:s gives me the Royal, besides.

I almost didn't notice that I had hit the original gutshot.
I pretty much figured BB for AQ, due to the 3Bet OTT -- I can't imagine him doing that without the A. Had it been any A but the A:s his semi-bluff would have worked.

As it stands OTT, assuming he has AQ, I am a 2:1 dog in this hand, but I'm being asked to put in 64¢ to win $1.28 -- exactly the same. (Did villain calculate that to determine his bet-sizing? If so, I'm very afraid)

I figured (wrongly as it turns out) that he would be unable to fold top two, so I shoved to try to look like a busted draw.

Nice.

Peace...
--VS

But the way the board is you cannot have a busted draw unless you have J-9 or some other weird combination which is very unlikely as you called his turn raise and not many people will call there with just an inside straight

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
My notes for the Gutshot calculation are:
"4 choices for each of the 4 = 4^4 * 10 possible lowest cards - 40 4-flushes * 48-4 "other" cards"
So 4^4 = 256 times 10 = 2560
40 of those combos are 4-flushes leaving 2520
There are 48 "other", but 4 of them fill the gutshot, so the end result is 2520 * 44 == 110880

So IMO main thing you forgot is to *3 from the beginning For any lowest card there are 3 gutshots possible. Example T: AQJT,AKJT,AKQT.

There are also some small things like ex this 5th card shouldn't be 9 here as we stated that T is the lowest, some "other"cards would give us OESD, like K for QJT8 gutshot, or if you want to throw away flush draws you should also think about possibility of 4-flushes like AcKsQsTs7s for AKQT gutshot and so on. But it's not so huge difference as *3.

OK, I'll go back to the original material where I worked this out.
My notes are a bit cryptic, and I can't exactly remember the entire logic chain.

When I have figured it out, I'll post it.

I could have been quite wrong, too ♠_cry:
--VS

NLHE
Let's start with today. I played 119 hands only. Up 2 BI. Nice.

Largely helped by this:

News Flash! Vorpal has a set and ACTUALLY GETS PAID OFF. Film at 11

Now to yesterday.
I had one of those nights, where every hand I got was just a *wee* bit worse than villains. A9o vs ATo etc etc. I had 3 big losses, totalling 7 BI, and over 1K hands came back to within 3.5, and even that was largely to due bluff-gone-wrong-followed-by-runner-runner-flush

I really, really don't know how to play super big hands.
I have a hard enough time getting paid off with sets -- how to you crack the $$ loose when you have Quads? I tried looking weak, but did a lousy job of inducing.
I was SO hoping he and an A

Perhaps I should just shove those, hoping for the Death Wish Hero Call

***The latter 3 hands were partly why my 3.5 BI loss wasn't an 8.5 BI loss

No 5-Card Draw today, as I'm re-working some of my calculations as noted above.

May all your tables be populated with morons (except, of course, yourself)
--VS

Originally posted by Anykey444

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
My notes for the Gutshot calculation are:
"4 choices for each of the 4 = 4^4 * 10 possible lowest cards - 40 4-flushes * 48-4 "other" cards"
So 4^4 = 256 times 10 = 2560
40 of those combos are 4-flushes leaving 2520
There are 48 "other", but 4 of them fill the gutshot, so the end result is 2520 * 44 == 110880

So IMO main thing you forgot is to *3 from the beginning For any lowest card there are 3 gutshots possible. Example T: AQJT,AKJT,AKQT.

There are also some small things like ex this 5th card shouldn't be 9 here as we stated that T is the lowest, some "other"cards would give us OESD, like K for QJT8 gutshot, or if you want to throw away flush draws you should also think about possibility of 4-flushes like AcKsQsTs7s for AKQT gutshot and so on. But it's not so huge difference as *3.

Quite correct.
I wrote a script that examined each of the 5-Card hands with no pair.
The script used a gap analysis to check that the hand was a gutshot.
To be a gutshot, then either the top four cards must have 1 gap of two, and two gaps of 1, or the bottom 4 cards must.

Example:
98654 - this hand will be a gutshot in either case
AKQJ9 - This hand is a gutshot if you toss the A, so is counted, even though tossing the 9 gives the same odds of improving, and improves to a better hand.

When I run the script 326 of the 1277 High-Card hands are possible gutshots.
Each hand has 1020 combinations to give that hand, so there are
332,520 combinations of gutshots among the high-card hands.

My original number was 110880
If you multiply that by 3, you get 332640, which is high by 120.
In the original notes, I had "-40 4-flushes", but we need to multiply those by 3 as well, hence the 120 discrepancy.

No flipping wonder I always seem to be getting gutshots!

Now that I've done this, the next thing I want to work on is,
"When checked to in the BB do I throw all cards, or keep a gutshot?"
I do both -- I've even hit the gutshot (and probably lost!)
I've drawn 2 to a straight flush (so-called cathop)
I've drawn 3 keeping AK or AQ

I've never taken any time to figure out which is best -- largely it matters little in the long run. In the BB faced with a limper from EP, I assume a decent pair, but a limper in the SB can have anything.

Thanks, Anykey444 for point out my mistake -- well spotted!
--VS

You could use http://sliceeq.com/ I hope.

It's also interesting what to do with hands like AK22

I think BB vs limpers play depends very much on number of limpers, their ranges and especially on our high cards in gutshot/cathop.

So for example good QsJsTs cathop could be bluff raised against one limper 22-77 range and bet postdraw if me miss or hit strong (we have something like 36% real equity and I hope for some FE), while IMO it's better to draw 5, not 2 to hand like 2s3s6s, especially if his range is like 44 - 77.

BTW how to pronounce "th" in cathop? Is it like in "cat hop" or like in "cathode"?

.