You CAN'T prove is mathematically because it has nothing to do with math..

__________________
KiD[ReD]
Administrator
We're currently looking for news posters to post about poker-related news. Please PM or E-mail me (webmaster@pokerforums.org) to volunteer!

I bet you you could set up a computer simulation (andbody got PokerProbe or wilson's? I think they could do this) to track the quality of where they have been folded around to the blinds.

__________________

No dude you can't.. think about it..it all depends on the exact players cards and their current mood and style and chip stack and a billion other things..

__________________
KiD[ReD]
Administrator
We're currently looking for news posters to post about poker-related news. Please PM or E-mail me (webmaster@pokerforums.org) to volunteer!

Exactly, you set up a set of criteria for starting hands, and you track the average starting hand for the blinds, and then the hands of the blinds when the computer folds around to them, and then compare those two lists on a histogram (frequency chart? may be using the worng term here) Over a few hundred million sims we should be able to see if the average hand is better or worse bue to the bunmching factor.

__________________

No it isnt it is all about statistics. And where a person is at the table has nothing to do with the quality of cards. The more people there are to act after you the greater the chance someone has a quality hand.


Having two players left to act is much better than having 8 players left to act.

AGG! I just sketched out hoqw to code it... cept it would take years to sim on the PALM, be like running the sim on an old Commodore 64. Anybody got VB6 they could send me? LOL

__________________

I think I mentioned it some time back.. Obviously this applies to ring.. I dont play many tournaments - but I guess its important there too.

This is horribly complex. In essence - as you know the ppl on the blinds will on average have crap cards so if you have any strength e.g AJ os in mid/late postion you must raise or else you risk them striking a pair and you losing the blinds to a weaker set of hole cards. You should also raise with AJ os in mid/late to punish previous limpers with pp.

The problem in ring is the rake - if you 'attack' with 4bb (4*big blind not bet)
with AJ- then your left with a guy might call you on BB with 9A(fair enough) if he hits his 9 an you hit the jack the betting will get quite hostile BUT.. you are only fighting over the blinds - you can end up paying 25bb to win 1.5 bb - and given two players of equal ability - somewhere down the line the situation will be reversed so rather horribly the rake doubles. SO - when you go through the maths for typical 4bb attacks on blinds you end up paying nearly twice as much in rake as you do in winning the bloody things... In Skalansky speak attacking blinds then becomes -eV.

You have to attack the blinds in poker beacuse this is the major leak in the game otherwise - even in ring. This is good because it makes the game happen.. BUT actually a 5% rake means classical 4bb attacks aren't a good idea. - It also means that top pair betting (i.e poker) is suppressed.

I'm waiting for the traffic on poker champs to get up - this guy Hansen clearly appreciates this. What is dissappointing is that the poker sites are being so greedy at the moment with rake that they are killing off the chance to play good poker. At PP for example you are left waiting for the nuts because it's not worth playing for high pair - this dries the game terribly.

Again this is observing loads of other ppls game at looking at the math - not just my game.

You'll notice with Pokerstars that at 0.02/0.04 there is no rake for the first $1 - this is critical. High pair is typically worth about 80 c at that level so on PS at the lowest level you can actually play Poker!!.. It also encourages weaker players to move up the limits. Most money is made by good players hitting high pair - but they have to be allowed to bet it out.

Depending on how you play only AA and KK as hole cards are generally worth more than the blinds - therefore you must use any strength to pick up the blinds - but geeze is it hard.

In tournament you don't have an in-game rake - if you did (at 5%) an average two table SnG would last about 50 hands before the money vanished from the table!!

Bob

__________________
See me playing $10/$20NL like it was play money

http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?...405&q=xxdemexx

Doberman: "but Sarge, isn't poker gambling and just luck?"
Sgt. Bilko:" not the way I play it"

It's very doable to set this up if you have the right program.(I'm not sure about poker probe) Marm is correct, its called the bunching theory, assuming you know their starting hand criteria, the "big cards" are slightly more common after it has been folded to you. Doesn't really affect the game much but its true.

__________________
“There's no sense in being precise when you don't even know what you're talking about.” - John von Neumann

As opposed to the "bonching" theory?

I believe Malmuth ridiculed this somewhere (or it was in one of the 2+2 books).

These guys could all be folding K-little and A-little, and QJs because there is no odds because everyone else folded.

This is something that Mason Malmuth wrote on 2+2

If a bunch of people have passed, the remaining hands on average will be better if and only if the playable hands are all of one type. Now what does that mean?

Let's look at an example. Suppose your game is ace-to-five lowball draw. The only hands that people play are those that contain lots of low cards. This means that if a bunch of players have passed, they were far more likely than what would be expected if you were dealt the first five cards out of the deck to have folded hands that contained lots of high cards. Thus the remaining hands should and are better than normal.

Now let's look at limit hold 'em. Yes, people play high cards, but not necessarily all of them in the early positions. In addition, hands like small pairs and suited connectors will also get played. Plus a very common discarded hand should be something like "big-little." If this is happening, you really can't draw conclusions as to whether the remaining hands after several players have passed will be better or worse than average. This has been the basis of my argument that the bunching factor in hold 'em, unlike some other forms of poker, is negligible.

Best wishes,
Mason