NL10... required reading?

this site should be more than enough for the basics

I think you could find very useful the video section here on PokerStrategy. You are Silver status and I think you could find some useful videos behind the maths of poker. However I don't know what to suggest regarding SSS, because I play BSS.

http://www.pokerstrategy.com/video/#searchtext=math&key=all&contenttype=0&gametype=0&tablesize=0&languages=en&levels=basic,bronze,silver,gold,platinum,diamond&lowerlimit=0&upperlimit=100&ob=date&od=desc&page=1&rpp=10

Thanks for the replies.

@ Rihard4a....not sure how I got my silver status but believe me it probably makes me look much moee knowledgeable than I am!

@ Gadgaard.... could you point me towards some examples mate? For instance, I have read the whole section up to silver standard of SSS and whilst I have a feeling that the advice is sound it doesn't explain the maths of how it was arrived at?

Hey chubby

what math exactly are you interested in? For a start i could point you towards this article which explains more of the math behind EV and ranges and later in the Gold articles it goes more into combos and odds plus advanced EV and fold equity. I know they are in the no limit section but the concepts can be applied to all areas of the game. Hope this helps.

Regards,
Luke

Thanks for the reply mate but when I click the link it just trys to open an email?

Originally posted by ChubbyTrucker
Thanks for the reply mate but when I click the link it just trys to open an email?

Should be fixed for you now, there was an error in the coding

Thanks for the link mate. No chance of me understanding any of the practical workings but it did give me a new understanding of marginal profit/calling situations. I'll also do a lot of simulations of different situations in pokerstove and try to remember them.
One thing I did notice......the situations assume you are in cash games? I can see the benefit of knowing even if luck works against you in the short term its still long term profit. Not much help in a tournament if that one time variance busts you out though?

Hi chubby

Yeah you're right I linked that article from the BSS section which is typically relevant to cash games. Yeah tournament players are a lot more conservative given the consequences of busting. But these concepts will still be very useful on nl10. How's the SSS going? I'm thinking of learning it myself.

Regards,
Luke

TBH mate the SSS was boring the pants off me........ I prefer getting a bit more creative which is why I need to try and crack the ranges/ev etc so I know what situations I have to give up on and which I can call out with

the problem with getting old is the grey cells don't retain much anymore and my maths was pretty rubbish at the best of time so im not doing so good with this at the moment!

So you want a book about poker math. Here it is the holy bible on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Poker-Bill-Chen/dp/1886070253
:coolface:

Seriously, this is like an academic textbook, don't buy it.

Two easy and good books to read are:
1) http://www.amazon.com/Poker-Math-That-Matters-Simplifying/dp/061539745X

2) http://www.amazon.com/Math-Holdem-Collin-Moshman/dp/0984619429/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369268028&sr=1-3&keywords=poker+math

Although, since you are a beginner i suggest you watch the videos and read the articles first (as said above). But if you like learning from books, go ahead and buy whatever you like.
(also, google is your friend, don't you ever forget that )

Hey chubby

What parts are you struggling with exactly? we may be able to get you some help with that If i can't help you personally

Regards,
Luke

Originally posted by Erevos
So you want a book about poker math. Here it is the holy bible on the subject:
http://www.amazon.com/Mathematics-Poker-Bill-Chen/dp/1886070253
:coolface:

Seriously, this is like an academic textbook, don't buy it.

Two easy and good books to read are:
1) http://www.amazon.com/Poker-Math-That-Matters-Simplifying/dp/061539745X

2) http://www.amazon.com/Math-Holdem-Collin-Moshman/dp/0984619429/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1369268028&sr=1-3&keywords=poker+math )

Thanks for the heads up mate. I remember reading an SnG book by moshman but I didnt really get the whole equity/hand ranges stuff then either. I still dont feel confident getting it in unless ive a good feeling im winning!
I read an article about the txt book and im not going there.......it has to be simple enough to work out within the ten second limit the sites give you to act

Originally posted by legand73
Hey chubby

What parts are you struggling with exactly? we may be able to get you some help with that If i can't help you personally

Regards,
Luke

I still have issues with knowing when I should call allins without a made hand based purely on the equity maths......knowing which gambles are long term +ev?

hey chubby

oh ok sure. At any rate it would be a good idea to check out this article and familiarise yourself with this chart. The ones you definitely want to memorise are your chances of hitting flush draws and open ended straight draws and maybe overcards just as a starting point.

Essentially we want to work out the cards that will give us a made hand (i.e our outs) and compare those to the cards that will not help us and we express those in a ratio of helpful cards: unhelpful cards. For example if we have the nut flush draw with A :heart:K and the flop is 2 :heart:9 :heart:6 There are 9 cards that will give us a flush (13 possible hearts minus 2 in our hand and 2 on the flop) and 38 that won't (52 cards minus 2 in our hand and 3 on the flop leaves 47, 9 of which are our outs leaving 38). The numbers we are most interested in here are 9 and 38. This is how we get our odds of winning the hand. and is expressed in ratio form 9:38 which essentially 1:4. (9 divided by 9 is 1, 38 divided by 9 is 4.2)

Now this value is really important it lets us know the ratio that we will hit our hand compared to not hitting and this is the value we compare to what we need to call to see the next card. These are the values that are in the chart I linked above and in memorising that chart you won't need to be able to do this step during the hand but it is definitely advisable to know why we reach the values expressed in the odds chart.

If the opponent is betting $1 into a $5 pot we have to call $1 to win a possible $6 (the $5 pot plus the extra $1 he put in) so in a ratio this works out as 1:6. We now have our pot odds. Now this value we compare to our odds of hitting our flush and giving us the best hand which is 1:4 because we will win the hand 1 in 5 times (for every 1 time we hit the card we need there are 4 times where we don't hit the card we need) but are making 6 times more than we have to invest this is a profitable call

the way i like to look at it sometimes just to really hit it home is that if I play the above situation out. Say statistically speaking the first four times i miss my flush i've lost $4 for the times i had to call but then the fifth time i win $6 dollars i'm now up $2 then the next four times i miss but then i hit on the fifth so now i'm up $4. I'm winning money more than i'm losing money in the long run so this play is +EV

I apologise for the wall but it takes a bit to explain. If there is anything I didn't explain well please let me know but definitely check out the articles they will be able to explain a lot more clearly I just tried to give a brief (or not so brief haha) explanation.

Regards,
Luke

And it is a very basic overview of the concept because i haven't considered say what hands we're facing where several cards may need to be discounted and haven't considered the calculations that need to be made on the river just to name a few

Hey Luke

This is whats confusing me.......heads up your maths works for me. 6 or 10 up it doesn't.

6 up we have 18 dealt cards, 3 on the board and (if the software replicates the real game?) a peeled card taken off the top before the flop leaving 30 cards in the deck? however...... if the averages are correct a slightly more than a third of our remaining 9 outs will have been dealt to other players so we're chasing 6 outs from 30 cards so the ratio is closer to 1:5?

with a full 10 ring the figures are 20 dealt three plus one on the flop leaving 27 but since now though nearly 2/5ths of our outs could have been dealt already we're chasing 3.6 outs from 27 a ratio of closer to 1:8

the pleasing thing when I started following my maths and stopped chasing straights/flushes and such is that im now making money! I may not always be playing optimally but it saves a huge amount of tilt related losses! ♦

While it is true that some player out there also has a heart somewhere, you don't take that into account when thinking of your outs. The fact is, there's only 5 known cards on the flop: your hole cards and the community cards.

I understand where your coming from, but it's much simpler and effective to simple think in terms of known cards rather than cards that other people might have had/folded

Hey Tino......

Im not sure if my math is even sound or not.....it just seems logical based on how ive seen other problems resolved. whether it adds elements that cant be proved 100% of the time I would think is irrelevant?

I recommend taking a look at this article if you haven't yet: http://www.pokerstrategy.com/strategy/bss/1563/1/

This article is all about the concept of odds and outs, and explains in a very simple, basic manner how this concept works.

Look at it this way: poker is a game of incomplete information. When you have a flush draw, there's 9 cards in the deck that can make you your flush. Perhaps all 9 hearts were dealt to other players that folded. That is true. But on the other hand, perhaps nobody had a heart at all. There's no way for you to know.

So you cannot use this information to your advantage. You don't know any of the other cards, whether they're still in the deck or if they're in someone's hand. You can only work with the information you do have, which means your cards and the community cards.

But like I said, read the article I linked to, if needed read it multiple times. There will be a point where you get that "aha" moment and you'll get it