Hi all,

Just wondering what practice exercises people find helpful to develop using combos when playing at the tables?

When you're at the tables do you use exact numbers or estimations?

Thanks,
Gabe16

You can spectate hands or just take a deck of cards and deal some boards. Give villain various ranges and then try counting the hand combos of portions of their range.

Get fluent with "choose 2".
C(n, 2) = n(n-1) / 2

E.g. if there are 3 spades on board and you have none, there are C(10,2) = 10*9/2 = 45 flush combos for a Villain if they're playing any suited hand. After some practice with choose-2 combos, you'll start to know them by memory like multiplication tables.

Sometimes instead of choose-2, you have to multiply. How many offsuit AK are there? 4*3

If a range consists of different hand types, you usually have to add. Like say he either has TPTK or a FD on a two-tone board. Then he has 3*4 pair combos (3 cards of the top rank on the board, 4 cards of the top kicker) and C(11,2)=55 FD combos, for a total of 67 combos. If he bets, then he's semi-bluffing 55/67 or roughly 5/6 of the time.

Sometimes there is overlap: maybe the board is K85 two-tone and he either has a FD, 67 or both. Then he has C(11,2) + 4*4 - 1 combos. The -1 is so that the straight flush draw isn't counted twice (which it otherwise would be since it's included in both of the added terms).

It's simple stuff and it won't take much practice to get fast at it.

I had the same question and this helps, while it looks complicated, just got to try it out.

Hi guys,
My question would be, how can I apply this combos algorithms in order to get profits during the game?

let say that I put in a range a tight player and there is an A on the flop, isn't enough this information to decide the next action? in fact, we know that most likely he has an A

still,let say that the opponent bets and there are three suited cards on the flop including a K. How can I use the the combination if I have a AK off suited, is he betting because of the flush or because of the K?

Thank you

Here is a link to a video that will teach you how to do flop analysis using combos. You do not need flopzilla (it is nice though), equilab is a free program that works fine.

http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=KHnIX85C0so

The more you do this the quicker you will get, eventually you will be able to apply this thought process during the hand while you play.

This is what I do for 'combo counting practice'

Hi Heehaww,

It took me 1 min to understand what you said, you just simplify C= N!/(N-R)!R! learn something new everyday, thanks.

Yeah and in general: C(n, r) = n*(n-1)*...*(n+1-r) / r!
The numerator is nPr.

Also useful is the identity C(n, r) = C(n, n-r)

So you can always use r <= n/2, for instance C(52,40) = C(52,12)

(Which makes sense without math -- choosing 40 cards is the same as picking which 12 cards are not chosen.)