Relative Value Of Poker Hands

Significant Terms - New players only relative value of poker hands (first deposit). 100% Deposit Match Bonus from £20 to £300: Min 50x wagering (% game weightings apply), play restrictions apply. Max bonus bet of £5, 15 days to accept & 30 days to complete wagering. Ace to Six relative value of straight “AKQJT”. No-pair hands are compared starting with the highest-ranking card, just as in high poker, except that the high hand loses. In ace-to-six low, straights and flushes are accounted for (as compared to Ace-to-five) and count as high(and are therefore bad), and aces play as the lowest card.'

Covering live poker tournaments for a living affords me the opportunity to see countless thousands of hands played out, many of which offer interesting and potentially valuable insights into how players — both amateurs and professionals — play the game. In this ongoing series, I’ll highlight hands I’ve seen at the tournaments I’ve covered and see if we can glean anything useful from them.

The Scene

This week’s hand comes from a tournament I covered about a month ago, the Mid-States Poker Tour Grand Falls Main Event that took place at the Grand Falls Casino Resort just outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. The tournament drew a field of 238 runners, and just three remained when this hand went down with the winner set to bank $64,655 and the next two payouts receiving $38,091 and $21,931.

The tournament is at Level 25 (15,000/30,000/4,000), and everyone left has a fairly deep stack considering they have reached the late stages. Jon Maras is leading with 1.925 million, Alan Curl (pictured above) is next with 1.825 million, and Kim Rasmussen is the short stack with about 1 million even. Most pots that have been contested have been played fairly aggressively, with pot-sized bets often the norm.

The Action

Maras folded from the button, leaving Rasmussen (small blind) and Curl (big blind) heads up. Rasmussen completed, and Curl checked his option.

The flop came and Rasmussen led out for 120,000, more than the size of the pot. Curl peeled in position and both saw a fall on the turn. Rasmussen slowed down with a check and this time Curl bet 120,000. Rasmussen then check-shoved with the 800,000 or so he had left and Curl called.

Curl:
Rasmussen:

Rasmussen expressed regret that the card he had liked on the turn ended up sinking him, but nonetheless called for another seven or six on the river. Neither came as a fell, ending his tournament in third.

Concept and Analysis

Both players elect to see the flop for the minimum in this hand, a reasonable decision considering their marginal holdings. Rasmussen then flops top pair with a gutshot straight draw, a hand he has to be pretty happy with considering he’s up against a range of any two cards from a check in the big blind.

He decides to overbet the pot, a decision which may look a little overaggressive at first glance but is essentially right in line with how the table was playing. Curl was likely to peel with plenty of hands worse than Rasmussen’s seven-six in this spot, and indeed he did so with a gutshot and an overcard.

Where Rasmussen runs into trouble is when he turns two pair, at which point he slows down with a check. That’s a perfectly reasonable play, but when Curl fires at the pot, Rasmussen makes a puzzling decision to shove all in. He has two pair, but with four to a straight on the board he can easily be drawing to just four outs on the river.

This is where it’s important to understand that every hold’em hand has two values — absolute value and relative value. Imagine you hold on a board of . In a different hand, you hold the same , but the board is . The absolute value of both hands is the same: one pair, aces. But the value relative to the board is worlds apart, as the second hand is much stronger.

In this instance, top two pair is a fairly weak hand considering any hand with a five in it makes a straight. Most of the time, top two pair is a hand we’re thrilled to have, and getting it in heads-up in a blind-versus-blind scenario would be a no-brainer.

By shoving all in, Rasmussen made the mistake of playing his hand based on its absolute value. He likely chased away any hands he was ahead of, and Curl indeed showed up with the winning straight to beat him. That pot vaulted Curl into the chip lead to begin heads-up play, and he soon prevailed to become an MSPT champion and winner of the $64,655 first prize.

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  tournament strategyno-limit hold’emrelative valueabsolute valueMid-States Poker TourMSPTAlan CurlKim Rasmussenpostflop strategy

• Related Tournaments

  Mid-States Poker Tour

• Related Players

  Alan CurlKim Rasmussen

In the poker game of Texas hold 'em, a starting hand consists of two hole cards, which belong solely to the player and remain hidden from the other players. Five community cards are also dealt into play. Betting begins before any of the community cards are exposed, and continues throughout the hand. The player's 'playing hand', which will be compared against that of each competing player, is the best 5-card poker hand available from his two hole cards and the five community cards. Unless otherwise specified, here the term hand applies to the player's two hole cards, or starting hand.

• 2Limit hand rankings

Essentials[edit]

There are 1326 distinct possible combinations of two hole cards from a standard 52-card deck in hold 'em, but since suits have no relative value in this poker variant, many of these hands are identical in value before the flop. For example, A♥J♥ and A♠J♠ are identical in value, because each is a hand consisting of an ace and a jack of the same suit.

Therefore, there are 169 non-equivalent starting hands in hold 'em, which is the sum total of : 13 pocket pairs, 13 × 12 / 2 = 78 suited hands and 78 unsuited hands (13 + 78 + 78 = 169).

Poker Hand Values Rank

These 169 hands are not equally likely. Hold 'em hands are sometimes classified as having one of three 'shapes':

• Pairs, (or 'pocket pairs'), which consist of two cards of the same rank (e.g. 9♠9♣). One hand in 17 will be a pair, each occurring with individual probability 1/221 (P(pair) = 3/51 = 1/17).

An alternative means of making this calculation

First Step As confirmed above.

There are 2652 possible combination of opening hand.

Value Of Poker Hands

Second Step

There are 6 different combos of each pair. 9h9c, 9h9s, 9h9d, 9c9s, 9c9d, 9d9s

To calculate the odds of being dealt a pair

2652 (possible opening hands) divided by 12 (the number of any particular pair being dealt. As above)

2652/12 = 221

• Suited hands, which contain two cards of the same suit (e.g. A♣6♣). Four hands out of 17 will be suited, and each suited configuration occurs with probability 2/663 (P(suited) = 12/51 = 4/17).

• Offsuit hands, which contain two cards of a different suit and rank (e.g. K♠J♥). Twelve out of 17 hands will be nonpair, offsuit hands, each of which occurs with probability 2/221 (P(offsuit non-pair) = 3*(13-1)/51 = 12/17).

It is typical to abbreviate suited hands in hold 'em by affixing an 's' to the hand, as well as to abbreviate non-suited hands with an 'o' (for offsuit). That is,

QQ represents any pair of queens,

KQ represents any king and queen,

AKo represents any ace and king of different suits, and

JTs represents any jack and ten of the same suit.

There are 25 starting hands with a probability of winning at a 10-handed table of greater than 1/7.^[1]

Limit hand rankings[edit]

Some notable theorists and players have created systems to rank the value of starting hands in limit Texas hold'em. These rankings do not apply to no limit play.

Sklansky hand groups[edit]

David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth^[2] assigned in 1999 each hand to a group, and proposed all hands in the group could normally be played similarly. Stronger starting hands are identified by a lower number. Hands without a number are the weakest starting hands. As a general rule, books on Texas hold'em present hand strengths starting with the assumption of a nine or ten person table. The table below illustrates the concept:

Chen formula[edit]

The 'Chen Formula' is a way to compute the 'power ratings' of starting hands that was originally developed by Bill Chen.^[3]

Highest Card

Based on the highest card, assign points as follows:

Ace = 10 points, K = 8 points, Q = 7 points, J = 6 points.

10 through 2, half of face value (10 = 5 points, 9 = 4.5 points, etc.)

Pairs

For pairs, multiply the points by 2 (AA=20, KK=16, etc.), with a minimum of 5 points for any pair. 55 is given an extra point (i.e., 6).

Suited

Add 2 points for suited cards.

Closeness

Subtract 1 point for 1 gappers (AQ, J9)

2 points for 2 gappers (J8, AJ).

4 points for 3 gappers (J7, 73).

5 points for larger gappers, including A2 A3 A4

Add an extra point if connected or 1-gap and your highest card is lower than Q (since you then can make all higher straights)

Relative Value Of Poker Hands

Phil Hellmuth's: 'Play Poker Like the Pros'[edit]

Phil Hellmuth's 'Play Poker Like the Pros' book published in 2003.

Statistics based on real online play[edit]

Poker Hands Chart

Statistics based on real play with their associated actual value in real bets.^[4]

Nicknames for starting hands[edit]

In poker communities, it is common for hole cards to be given nicknames. While most combinations have a nickname, stronger handed nicknames are generally more recognized, the most notable probably being the 'Big Slick' - Ace and King of the same suit, although an Ace-King of any suit combination is less occasionally referred to as an Anna Kournikova, derived from the initials AK and because it 'looks really good but rarely wins.'^[5][6] Hands can be named according to their shapes (e.g., paired aces look like 'rockets', paired jacks look like 'fish hooks'); a historic event (e.g., A's and 8's - dead man's hand, representing the hand held by Wild Bill Hickok when he was fatally shot in the back by Jack McCall in 1876); many other reasons like animal names, alliteration and rhyming are also used in nicknames.

List Of Poker Hand

Notes[edit]

1. ^No-Limit Texas Hold'em by Angel Largay
2. ^David Sklansky and Mason Malmuth (1999). Hold 'em Poker for Advanced Players. Two Plus Two Publications. ISBN1-880685-22-1
3. ^Hold'em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner by Lou Krieger, Chapter 5, pages 39 - 43, Second Edition
4. ^http://www.pokerroom.com/poker/poker-school/ev-stats/total-stats-by-card/
5. ^Aspden, Peter (2007-05-19). 'FT Weekend Magazine - Non-fiction: Stakes and chips Las Vegas and the internet have helped poker become the biggest game in town'. Financial Times. Retrieved 2010-01-10.
6. ^Martain, Tim (2007-07-15). 'A little luck helps out'. Sunday Tasmanian. Retrieved 2010-01-10.