What exactly does 25nl mean?

No Limit Hold'em with a $25 maximum buy-in. Blinds of $.10/$.25.

im really confused with this thread wat is going on?

You'll need to elaborate on that a little.

People sit at their computers, move their mouse, which manipulates the cursor on their computer, click on a button that says reply. This opens a little white box on a new screen. Then, they hit buttons on a keyboard, which produces letters on the screen. Then, they click send.

Do good players really calculate probabilities when they play? Or do they just have a feeling of what's a good hand and what's a bad hand, based on common sense and experience.

Another question: I've heard that during the first round of betting, if you want to bet, then you should bet between 2 and 4 times the big blind. But why? Just because everyone else says that's a good bet size? How do you know logically that this is a good amount to bet?

I was going to ask this very same question.

It's just a matter of two things from what I can see.

1. If you bet too little, you're not getting paid enough when you end up winning.

2. If you bet too much, you're not getting enough action to get paid enough when you end up winning.

It just so happens that ~3-5 or ~2-4 BB is the sweet spot in terms of those two factors. You'll use the upper range when you have a good hand.

Depends on the situation, usually it's really obvious if you have odds or not, and you've been in that spot a zillion times before (ie: flush draw or open ended straight draw).

Every once in a while you get in a spot where you have to stop and try to count your (clean) outs (ie: combo draw that may have overcard outs facing turn push).

Why always 3BB?

So then what is it called when the blinds are $.01/$.02? Would that be 2nl or 5nl?

Yes.

2NL/5NL is a little murky because some sites $.01/$.02 is a $2 max buy-in and other it's $5. Just use whatever the max buy-in is, everyone will know what you mean.

Rethinking this, I don't think I answered your question. I think now you're really asking about hand reading and I was talking about outs and odds to call.

The answer to what I think you're asking is, "Yes", you're always trying to put people on a range of hands and decide how best to act against them.. Depending on the board/opponent/action/your cards this can be virtually automatic (standard) to very complicated.

As a really simple example, in a multi-way pot with an ace on the flop and no draws available, if a predictable player bets out, he has the pair of aces or better virtually always.

Depends on the site. UB is a $2 max buyin, except for their uncapped tables (do they still have them?). Stars is a $5 max buyin.

XNL = No Limit Hold Em Poker with a maximum buy-in of X.

Actually, when people say 2NL, 5NL, 25NL, 100NL, or whatever, they are talking about the standard max buy-in of 100 big blinds. On Pokerstars the 2NL and 5NL tables have a max buy-in of 250 big blinds and on full tilt there are new 200 big blind deep tables. But people still refer these tables in terms of their standard 100 big blind buy-in. Usually you'll indicate it's a deep table by just saying "25NL deep".

So, to answer your question, $0.01/$0.02NL would be 2NL.

Really? I thought peopel always call it by the buyin. I mean that's what the number means. So pokerstars 2NL is actually 5NL. Pfff makes sense. Stop using the wrong names everyone!

Pokerstars 2NL is just deepstacked to a maximum buy-in of 250 big blinds. $2 would be the standard buy-in at 100 big blinds.

If the maximum buy-in is $5, then it's much more appropriate to call it 5NL than 2NL.

Well, there's also $0.02/$0.05NL that's also 200bb deepstacked on PS which most people refer to as $5NL. And the next level is $0.05/$0.10NL which has the standard 100bb max buy-in, $10NL.

Also, Full Tilt has a lot of new deepstacked tables. Much easier to say you're playing 25NL deep than something like 50nl with 25NL blinds, imo.

Ohh kay if there are deepstacked tables alongside 100bb ones, I guess it makes sense. Just often at the absolute lowest stakes the blinds are somewhy made minuscule as to make it look cheaper than it really is I guess, there if there is no 100bb analogue it makes more sense to call the stakes by buy-in, but whatever.

Hi, didn't want to start a thread because this really is a stupid question.


How do I calculate hand odds pre and post flop?

Is it simply a case of memorizing pre flop hand probabilities and calculating post flop hand probabilities using "out"?

In MOP, they have an example,

hand 1: Qc Jc
hand 2: As 3d
flop: Tc 9c 2d

According to Bill Chen, hand 1 has a 70% chance of winning. Can anyone use this as a guide to walk me through how to do the calculations?

The best thing to do is to download pokerstove - http://www.pokerstove.com

and play around. Here some guides:

2 overs vs. underpair is usually around 50%, give or take a few, depending on connectivity/suitedness.
2 unpaired low cards vs. 2 unpaired high cards are 33% roughly.
1 high card + 1 low card vs. 2 in between is about 40-45%
A pair vs. 2 lower cards is about 80%

If you want the mathematical process just to understand it...

You have 21 outs: 9 clubs, three remaining non-club kings, three remaining non-club eights, three jacks and three queens. There are 45 unseen cards left in the deck. The probability on you not hitting any of your outs at all neither on the turn nor the river is 24/45*23/44~0.28. The probability of you hitting a queen or a jack but your opponent hitting his ace is 6/45*3/45~0.01. Thus the probability of you losing is roughly 0.29. Therefore the probability of you winning is 1-0.29=0.71.

Pokerstove indeed confirms this:
Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

990 games 0.005 secs 198,000 games/sec

Board: Tc 9c 2d
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 70.909% 70.91% 00.00% 702 0.00 { QcJc }
Hand 1: 29.091% 29.09% 00.00% 288 0.00 { As3d }

I have a question about a post someone made in a different thread. I stopped reading here because I didn't understand what this guy was talking about.

What does this mean? In reference to buying in with 60BB or something.

Especially that part, what is saying?

He's saying that hands like suited connectors and low pocket pairs that are set mining (trying to hit 3 of a kind on the flop) have better implied odds to call against deep stacks than shorties.

When you figure the odds to call you look at pot odds and implied odds. Pot odds are the immediate odds the pot is laying you to make a call. If there's $20 in the pot and it's $5 to call, you're getting pot odds of 4-1.

Your implied odds is the amount of money you think you can make if you make your hand. So in the above example, if you have pot odds of 4-1 but the person you're calling has another $20 behind and you believe the rest is going in, your implied odds are 8-1. In other words, implied odds takes into account the money you can make on later streets if you make your hand.

Set mining is calling a raise with pocket pairs in the hopes of flopping a set and winning a big against someone who has a hand like KK/AA.

This is not a profitable strategy against a short stack because you don't win enough from them when you stack them to make up for all the times you don't hit your set and have to fold. You generally only want to set mine against stacks which are at least 10x the size of the raise you are calling (and who are likely to want to play a big pot).

I am thinking of making a deposit with Pstars. Im going to play no limit, Texas Hold-em cash games no higer than 50 cents and 1 dollar blinds. How much should I deposit?