I was reviewing a hand I played yesterday and was surprised to find that I was almost a coin flip (45% equity) against a made straight.

I had QJ of clubs, Flop was J98 two clubs. Villain made a huge bet, and his "range" consisted of made straights IMO. (T & 7 of not clubs is what I put in to Equilab.) And messing around with some different combos of the made straight it's generally still 40% equity, although if villain has exactly T7 of clubs then it's 38%.

All clubs are outs, but that's not even a quarter of the deck so I was surprised to see I had 45% equity with two cards to come. The tens and the occasional two Jacks or Queens on turn and river are enough to get it up to a flip. Unsurprisingly our equity plummets to 20% if the turn is a blank.

Still I found this surprising that a pair could have 40% equity against a made straight.

Your pair has very little equity, it's the flush draw and gutshot to a higher straight.

It isn't just a J + Q, running Qs, or running Js that give you a full house (or quads). A Jack plus pairing either the 9 or 8 on board would also work. So would running 9s or running 8s. All totaled, the different permutations of a full house or quads add about 2% to your hand's equity.

TY so much, I was really wondering how to calculate equity on improving to a full house.

To be fair, I didn't calculate anything myself. I just opened up Equilab, and entered in 22 vs. K4o on a board of 2KQr. The K4o has no backdoor outs other than to a FH or quads. The equity was just under 2%.

Top set in Omaha with no straights or flushes made on the turn can face such a huge draw it can barely call a pot bet

Top Set on the Turn with no made 5-cards hands possible on the Board doesn't have Pot Odds to call a pot bet in PLO?

Please show me a HU hand, or even a 3-way hand of PLO where top set is less than 33% equity to win with no possible 5-card made hands.

JJ22 v 8945

Board .. JT63

JJ is 55% to win


When you add in a 2nd opponent with AAKQ

JJ is now 44.44% to win


Now we change the Board to JT74 and the holding to 8965 with the same suit possibilities and we do end up with only 25% equity going to the River.

How often is this going to happen? We spend so much time on ranges that if we were ever to run into this spot we just have to laugh it off. GL

PS .. This is the ultimate Super Wrap situation

I said barely. Your examples are the same as mine, just taking flush outs away. Fix that and it's 35%, which is only just enough.

A big wrap with two flush draws can have up to 26 outs against top set, for 35% like sixfour said.

35% for the set, 65% for the draw, is what I meant, obviously.

The "wrap" part is kind of irrelevant here because the villain already has a made straight.

the bigger you bet, the more frequently you can bluff

I just found out that with unpaired hole cards, a player is only going to flop two pair one time in FIFTY. Literally 2%, significantly worse than the chances of getting a set with a pocket pair (12%).

I'm kind of shocked both in the math sense and my experience sense...I would've guessed it was nearly 10 times higher, like 20%, because it doesn't seem to be all that hard to get two pair. I've probably been factoring in the times I had a pocket pair and the board paired, however.

My strategy for playing against drunk people was to limp to see if they played in the hand and then only continue if I hit two pair. This plan is WAY worse than I thought I was.

Does that include paired boards? i.e, you hold KT, flop is T99. Technically, that is flopping two pair, just nowhere near as valuable as pairing both of your hole cards.

I remember years ago, reading some nugget of "advice" saying that you should avoid building big pots with overpairs because the average winning hand is two pair. This ignores the fact that Aces can make two pair too - and it's always the best two pair.

Final board: AK982r
You hold A2s
I hold A9o

I should have specified, pocket Aces.

Playing with Equilab for hands that are about 50% equity against two random cards, I got the following.

22

Q2s, J6s, T7s, 98s

K2o (50.5%), Q5o, J8o (50.5%), T8o

Although 22 and 98s have about the same 50% showdown equity versus a random hand, they don’t have the same realized equity, which is the equity actually achieved because you did not fold and villain did or you won in a showdown.

If the 2 pair doesn’t hit on the flop, and this will happen 88% of the time, he will likely fold to any opponent bet. On the other hand, 98s has possibilities for a flush or straight in addition to middle pairing or better. Therefore, the suited connector and other “good” hands such as two Broadway have more “playability” and are generally to be preferred over a low pair IMO.

Bottom Line: Equilab is great for what it does. But showdown equity (especially preflop) can only give you a first-cut look at the poker situation.

True nobody is playing 22 the same way they play T8o or 98s. I think it's valuable to have some idea where the middle is though. Especially when drunk people punt their last few chips without looking, situations like that it could be useful info.

Although I realized that a better gauge is putting equilab against a full table (9 random opponents) and see what hands are slightly above average, which is very very different from heads up:


A8o, K9o, Q9o, J9o, T9o...so because of straight effects, any two cards 9 or higher are better than average.

Any suited ace or king as well as a pair of twos is slightly ahead of 9 random opponents (12% vs the rest of the table's 9.7%). Suited queens and jacks are also very slightly ahead.

T4s is about in the middle as it gets, even after a billion hands Equilab hadn't converged.

95s, 85s, and shockingly 74s, 63s, 53s, 43s, are all better than random at full ring despite being worse than 40-60 dogs heads up. Not that shoving with 43s is such a good idea but I think if there's one lesson is that's the more players in the game the better suited cards are.

wat

they're both mediocre speculative hands that require decent implied odds which as a result you don't want to escalate the pot with too much early, and which you know immediately on the flop whether you want to commit or fold