PokerStars changed the Five-card Draw ?

FFS thought they'd changed the game rules or something important.

Hi Spock's spawn...

What you are describing is quite common and something you will need to get used to playing poker. It is very unlikely that PokerStars has changed anything, and very likely that you are just hitting a downswing of cards as compared to the upswing of cards you described having a few days ago.

I'm been around, you know. The users who replied this thread might had never played five-card draw on PokerStars. This kind of situations don't occur with such regularity before Black Friday or even 2/3 years ago. Back that time, when we saw a pat hand the only thing that we thought was: «How much money will I make this time?»
Now what we think is: «How many players will draw one card, and who often c/r.»

I've deposit 5-8 times the minimum amount possible on PokerStars, and what happened in every of those times was:

First day: Amazing profit or don't win/lose
Second day: Amazing profit
Third/Fourth day: Ruin

This time I was smarter, third day the downswing was start to happen so after my first losing table I just left.

This can't be a coincidence. I'm a winning player, so don't even try.

winning players don't complain about variance.

Originally posted by SonOfSonOfSpock
Who also notice the changes?

If pre-draw trips are more common, I sure have not noticed. ♠_cry:

I've been pretty much card dead through about 1500 hands since Thursday.
Even after losing several times with trips vs draw full houses and quads, I'm still break even though.

I don't recognize your name as a 5-Card Draw player on Stars, but i'm sure I've played against you.

I've sent you a message on the community tool. It would be good to get together to discuss hands, strategy etc.

Cheers,
VS

Originally posted by SonOfSonOfSpock
Who also notice the changes?

- Full houses discarding 3 cards and one card are now more common. I remember discarding 5 cards and I draw a full house last week.
- Pat hands are losing from daily bases to two pairs who improve
- Pre-draw trips are common, and also lose more frequently pos-draw

I deposited some days ago to have some fun and to pay a debt and in the second day I had four Full Houses in ten minutes, after those ten minutes I had trips, pats... amazing how lucky I was.
In the 3rd day the downswing occur. I'm taking a vacation right now and the only thing that makes me what to play again is the love for the game. One/two year(s) ago I said that PL/NL was suicidal, now I have to find a adjective.

Mate,
I discussed this situation with my friends - regular 5cd players and we all agree that something has changed.
5CD always had the lowest variance among all the PS games but now it is insanity.
I can agree with you that strange setups accuring too often. It started about a year ago.
I can see full vs quads 2-3 times during the session.
The point is that a regular player had always a huge edge vs fish but now PS just cut it in this crazy way.
And i know what i am saying - i played this game more then 3 years since now.

Good, finally one regular answered my question. Thanks!

@Rihard4a

I didn't blame variance [what I did was even bigger] read what u1ker said, his a regular you are not, so STFU.

@Vorpal

Dude, I have you on Skype... like one year or something. -- EsmagaSapos

@u1ker

What we could expect anyway? Spin&Gos, Casino crap games in a poker room. Did you saw this hand, 3/4 weeks ago:

Nedefin with a pat straigh flush draw versus Bessenok who draw 1 and get AAAKK? This was on PL $2/$4, I think... made a large pot. This means bad news for you, since you are a typical PL player. Did you ever thought about changing? I see you at some FL table also, but...

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

Originally posted by SonOfSonOfSpock
Who also notice the changes?

If pre-draw trips are more common, I sure have not noticed. ♠_cry:

I've been pretty much card dead through about 1500 hands since Thursday.
Even after losing several times with trips vs draw full houses and quads, I'm still break even though.

I don't recognize your name as a 5-Card Draw player on Stars, but i'm sure I've played against you.

I've sent you a message on the community tool. It would be good to get together to discuss hands, strategy etc.

Cheers,
VS

I feel ya. I feel so bad at 5CD these days everything is just better two pair vs two pair and trips over trips. You saw some of them tonight. remember "n1ghtahh" ? Man it sucked please send me a message too I was actually applying for friendship after noticing it was you at the tables. exactly to talk hands strats etc.

Hi guys,
I've been playing 5cd fairly regularly since the fall of 2011 -- so about 3 years now.
I don't have a huge amount of time, so I only have 250,000 hands.

If things are as you say, I should see a break in the slope of my winnings graph.
The graph is not a perfectly smooth one, of course, but overall, the trend is the same (more or less) from the beginning until now.

This is across limits from FL $0.10/$0.20 to FL $5/$10 so I've shown the graph in Big Bets. The black line is a 100-period moving average, and shows no break in slope, other than from about 150K hands to 170K hands which was a shot at FL $1/$2.

What I think you're seeing is a general improvement in the quality of opponent you face.

Some notes on the graph:
The graph was produced using Excel 2003, and the data points are the cumulative BB won at the end of each session.
Sessions are of varying length.

Best of luck,
VS

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

You should ask PS.com if they can pay you to make some 5CD theory vids, that is sick graph.

I love 5CD as a whole, apart from NLHE, 5CD (specifically NL 5CD) is my favourite game.

Originally posted by metza
You should ask PS.com if they can pay you to make some 5CD theory vids, that is sick graph.

I love 5CD as a whole, apart from NLHE, 5CD (specifically NL 5CD) is my favourite game.

Thanks, metza!
However, the information is already out there. After my initial drop, I read the 5-Card Draw articles on PokerStrategy.com and haven't changed my play much since. On the graph there is an upswing at about 110K hands, which occurred after reading the 5-Card Draw section of "The Education of a Modern Poker Player" written by jbpatzer, TwiceT and EmanuelC -- all from PokerStrategy.com.

I have seen several players playing this game too tightly, and many more playing too loosely. Both are long-term losing strategies.

Poker is a game of incomplete information, and in FL 5-Card Draw you have no information about your opponents range whatsoever -- except the fact that they bet, raised or called -- or did not. Notes are absolutely essential. Knowledge of pot odds is critical as well as knowledge of relative hands strength.

Beyond that, there isn't much to learn except how to fold when behind

Best of luck,
VS;

Well, i would say that FL is much diffarent then PL/NL and in general i was talking not about bad streaks and swings.
I just mentioned that coolers frequency become too high now.
btw nice graph

Originally posted by Avataren
I feel ya. I feel so bad at 5CD these days everything is just better two pair vs two pair and trips over trips. You saw some of them tonight. remember "n1ghtahh" ? Man it sucked please send me a message too I was actually applying for friendship after noticing it was you at the tables. exactly to talk hands strats etc.

I've accepted your invitation.

Best of luck,
VS

@u1ker, that's why I created this topic.

@Vorpal, nice graph

@metza, mangler241 aka bigpooch also have some kind of a book with notes and other relevant information. You can get in contact with him on this forum.

Guys just look at the limit 5-10 USD table that is currently on. How many full houses did you guys count? Insane. Enough to put 'alexxxandr83' tilting like a monkey and 'droseff' winning like never.

Originally posted by u1ker
Well, i would say that FL is much diffarent then PL/NL and in general i was talking not about bad streaks and swings.
I just mentioned that coolers frequency become too high now.
btw nice graph

Thanks, u1ker ♦

Yeah, coolers are a huge pain.
If you think of it though, at the lower limits, if an unknown 3Bets -- watch out.

My current database does not have a way to find out how often I was beaten by what hand strength, but I'm pretty sure that I get beaten the right amount.

Consider a hand where UTG open raises, and you are in BTN w/ trip Queens and 3Bet. UTG calls.
UTG draws 3, you draw 1.
UTG has Aces or Kings. You have the Queens and nobody open raises Jacks or less UTG that I know of.
Post-draw UTG checks, you bet.
UTG raises. Now what?

Here's where notes come in handy, but vs an unknown I'm always calling.
He *might* x/r w/ Aces up.
Against a check/raise I don't mind being beaten by drawn trips.
I *really* hate it though, when UTG plays r/c pre-draw, draws 3 and beats my trips w/ a straight.

The long and short of it is:
Any time a player has a pair, the odds of him getting trips or better is 6.86:1 so around 1/7th of the time he hits trips, and they're going to be better than yours.

Much different when the player is in the blinds, since they can call vs BTN with pairs that are weaker than Q, and then you WANT them to hit trips!

Peace,
VS

Cool thread bros.

That's what I wanted. To create a nice discussion with different opinions. Succeeded ...

I think if anyone is really curious, they could simply use statistical hypothesis testing based on their own HHs comparing pre-2014 with 2014 for the frequency of "coolers" but subjecting the HHs to specific criteria: perhaps FL with precisely 6 players at limits higher than $0.25-$0.5. From my personal experience in playing in the last year, it does seem that I see "coolers" more often, but I think that may be due to better play: how so? When the players play better, they fold or raise, so there are more hands per hour compared to say, about 2 years ago, where there would have been more limping. Nowadays, it's fairly common to see the BB get a walk compared to ~2011 or ~2012, when I'd think it would have been less common.

I would guess that per 100 hands dealt, the "cooler" frequency is about the same, but per table-hour, it's more frequent.