Yeah, I found that site in the end too (post #5017). Good stuff. I ended up playing the 280FPP Hyper's satelites for Sunday 1/4 mill which was good value. Next year with SN I'll just go for the 4k bonus.

Another tip for everyone also wondering about usage of FPPs is the 3,000FPP Turbo Takedown last sunday each month. Great value and you also get consecutive cash bonuses. Someone also mentioned the 3$r+a daily tournaments which have 84FPP satelites starting 1 hour before the 3$. These are also supposed to be good value (for both the satelites remember to unreg for T$ which in turn can be used in SNGs and MTTs or sold at ~95%). Last best practice tips I found was the VIP 10 and 20FPP tournaments, but with those kinds of fields, I dunno if I could ever cope.

The trolling part I guess is my own fault for asking in non-n00b threads here I can take it tho, and it actually got me to think about what I was doing with my FPPs.

Thanks again zaiga000, I appreciate it.

I have a question in regards to sample sizes. Say I have a 50 hand sample of opponent X. His stats are 15/13/2. How accurate are these stats? Do people apply a +-% depending on the amount of hands they have on someone (e.g., since I have only 50 hands on opponent X, his range is probably between 10-20/10-15/1-3)?

And what's roughly a good sample amount to have a fairly accurate indication of someones' stats (the bare minimum)?

Kallak, I think 50 hands give you a fair idea of someone's VPIP and PFR, but of course it may still change quite a few percent over the long run. A 15/13 may turn out to be a 22/18 after 1000 hands, or a 12/10, but he probably won't turn out to be a 40/10, for example.

If someone is 15/13 after 50 hands, you just have to assume he is a 15/13, because you don't know whether those stats are actually too high, or too low.

There is not a bare minimum number if hands to give a fairly accurate indication of some stats. The bigger the sample size, the more accurate it will be. A three hand sample says more than a two hand sample, etc. If your sample is small, it should become less important in your decision making.

A single sample is better than no sample at all; but having said that, a good rule of thumb is that you want at least 30 examples of the behavior you're measuring.

For VPIP, then, we would like to see the player in question put money voluntarily into the pot at least 30 times to get a good idea of the statistic. If it seems like the player is super-loose, playing something like half of their hands, then something like 60 dealt hands are sufficient. But if it seems like the player is tighter, then more hands will be needed. It would take something like 100 hands to have a good idea that someone had a VPIP of 30%, 150 hands to pin down a VPIP of 20%, 200 to get close to 15%, 300 for 10%, etc.

The same applies to aggression factor (AF), with the understanding that players in general raise preflop at least slightly less often than they play (even the most aggressive players flat-call in the big blind some of the time). So it's going to take more dealt hands to get the 30 preflop raises needed for the AF statistic to be a reasonably close measure.

And this illustrates why other statistics (attempt to steal, flop c-bet, turn c-bet, and so on) take so long to converge to useful values. It takes a lot of dealt hands to find out what a TAG's c-bet turn percentage is, simply because that TAG is going to be seeing relatively few flops and fewer turns.

Thanks zaiga000 and AlanBostick, I appreciate your help.

what s a good w$sd% at say 5nl?

I have a question about the 2/4 rule and a hand I saw earlier (I wasn't involved in it). Here is the hand:

Player 1: Ad6h
Player 2: QcJd

Board: KhQdAh

Now, if you plug this into pokerstove, the equity is as follows:

Player 1: 69.343%
Player 2: 30.657%

When I try to do the rule of 2/4 I'm getting a different answer. The number of outs I'm coming up with for Player 2 are: 2 Q's, 3 J's, 4 T's for a total of 9 outs. Multiplying this number by 4 you get 36 and then subtracting the number of outs over 8 results in 35%. So using the rule of 2/4 you get player 2 has 35% equity and player 1 has 65%.

Am I doing something wrong and including an out that is actually not an out here?

In that same hand, the turn comes a 2 of spades, and the number of outs is still 9 for player 2, so the equity changes to 18% for him and 82% for the opponent, but pokerstove says its 79% to 20% which is fairly close but is it within the proper range?

I'm basically just wondering if I'm using the rule of 4/2 correctly or if I haven't taken into account some outs, can anyone see if there are any extra outs or if I've included outs that aren't actually outs? Also, how do you take into account backdoor flush and backdoor straight draws when using the rule of 4? Do you just ignore them or what since they are not immediate outs?

Thanks for any help.

Flop: The actual percent is lower because villain will have redraws, meaning that when you make your hand on the turn, villain can still improve on the river to win or split the pot. Example: The turn is a queen, and the river is an ace. The rule of 2 and 4 is a rough estimation and doesn't account for these scenarios.

Turn: You're accounting for everything correctly. The rule of 2 and 4 is never exactly 100%, and the slight variance here is a result of that.

To the best of my knowledge, backdoor draws aren't accounted for at all in the rule of 2 and 4.

Ah right I completely forgot about redraws, thanks!

You can use backdoor draws with the rule of 2 and 4 if you assign effective outs to the backdoor draw. For example, a backdoor flush draw on the flop adds two effective outs to a hand that is going to the river.

Now that you mention it, I do recall a section about that in SSHE. Thanks for correcting me.

You're welcome.

Do you know of any articles that discuss effective outs more in detail? I just want to know the primary reasoning behind coming to the 2 effective outs, is it the same for backdoor straight draws? Thanks for your help as well

just wondering if someone can explain icm to me and how to work it out and also like can some one explain odds to me as in wen a guy says im getting 3 to 1 on my money and how i work that out

ICM is a bit more complicated, but I can explain the 2nd part.

If a guy says "I'm getting 3 to 1 on my money," it means for every 1 he invests, he can win 4: his own 1 back, as well as 3 more. For example, if the pot is $10, and the bet to me is $5 on top of that (making the pot $15 but not "right" yet), I'm getting $15 to $5 -- simplified as 3 to 1.

From a theory standpoint, I need to win this pot at least 1 out of every 4 times to break even. This is not accounting for rake as well as potential other money that might enter the pot (other players @ table).

cheers mate if any can explain the icm part would be great

http://www.sitandgoplanet.com/sitand..._to%20ICM.html

I am a complete and utter noob at poker.. Whether it's live poker or online poker i'm horrible at all of them. Should i try to improve by reading books and which books should i get?

A book is a great place to start. Which one you get depends on what you want to play.

Live: Harrington on Cash Games, 1 & 2.
Online: Harrington on Online Cash Games?

For more in depth details and reviews, check out the Books and Publications forum.

I play FR uNL and was wondering if I could get some opinions on whether expanding my game to include a bit of 6max or heads up play is a good or bad idea?

(Newish player 110k hands cash games).

Hi,

I have a question about 3-betting. I read that we should 3-bet for value only if we believe that our opponent will call the 3-bet with a worse hand. Oftentimes, though, I will 3-bet AQ from the blinds against a button steal knowing that they will probably have a worse hand and will not call a 3-bet (which would be incorrect according to what I read).

Could someone clarify this?
Thanks

I have a question about pot odds. I know a lot of the pros preach about using pot odds to call/fold, but if everyone follows pot odds, isn't it really easy to bluff them out. If I make a pot size bet with nothing, the other person unless they had the nuts would be inclined to fold, correct?

PokerTracker 3 or Hold ‘em Manager? Which one should I buy? and why?
Thanks

Nope.

On the river, if you make a pot-sized bet, you are offering your opponent 2-1 odds. It is correct for them to call with any hand that they believe will win at showdown 1/3 of the time (a little more due to rake). A good player will call you with a lot more than the nuts if you've shown an inclination to bluff in these situations.

How does one post images from ones computer to ones threads and posts, don't get the whole 'URL' bar that comes up...