Reason for the questions is that in a last few large field tournaments I have played it FELT like I was running particularly bad in terms of starting hands. Want to know that my feeling is right.

1. Where can I find statistics of how often hole cards (Holdem) are dealt over a large sample? I searched, but could not find it.

2. Practically, how do you know you run bad? There must be an expected frequency you are dealt certain hands in, say, 1K or 100K hands. Compared to hand histories might give you an idea on how far the expected vs. real results are, which would mean how unlikely a run of cards is.

Any resource would be appreciated!

uh If you can be more specific I can do the math for you.

This is how I look at it: I’ve played poker over a period of about 15 years at least a couple times a week. (15*2*52) = 1560 days minimum I’ve played cards (I have thousands of tracked tourneys and many untracked cash hands in addition to the hundreds of thousands of tracked hands).

I go into every day thinking it could be the day that my side of the 1560 sided dice comes up for a big win. Hopefully it’s not the day that I couldn’t win no matter how I play. Everything in between those extremes is possible.

Think about the grinders that have millions of hands played lifetime. They probably had extreme ups and downs over those hands. It’s almost inevitable.

Does knowing if you were running bad help you in any way?

Sure! From a quick glance, 677 hands played I was dealt pocket pairs exactly twice.

I am not sure. I think mentally it might help, knowing that I am experiencing a bad run of cards. I think I'd like to know how bad it is.

But really, obviously, it doesn't change anything other than current mindset.

This is a good advice. Thank you.

I know that drawdowns happen, sometimes they can be long and painful. This largely deals with runouts = results, which has to do with the quality of play = skills. I am wondering how THAT is related to WHERE you start (which are the hands you are dealt preflop).

Here's a card matrix from the free tool Equilab:


There are 1326 starting hands.
6 combos of each pocket pair. (13*6 = 78)
4 combos of each suited hand. (4 * 78 = 312)
12 combos of each offsuit hand. (12 * 78 = 936)

So the chance of being dealt any pocket pair is 78/1326 (just under 6%)
And the chance of being dealt a particular pocket pair is 6/1326 (0.45%)
i.e. You'll get dealt AA about once every 221 hands on average.

I suspect your memory is flawed, because you should expect to get dealt about 40 pairs on average in the long run over a sample of that size.

FWIW, it's not uncommon to go over 1200 hands without getting aces, but you usually get dealt a pair of some sort every few orbits. (And everyone who plays long enough will eventually get dealt aces three times in a row!)

Yes, you are right. I screwed up the export from Holdem Manager and counted incorrectly (my bad). Now that I've looked closer, it is in line with the expected probabilities. Depending on the filters, I get pairs (any) about 5%-6%. That's in line with a pair once every 2.2 orbits.

Thanks a lot!

Late to the party again ... Pocket pairs are about every 16-17 hands. A specific pocket pair (AA or other) is about 1 in 221 hands.

There are rushes of course. I sometimes notice a 'hand of the day' (like KJ or 45) but remember that there are 16 combos of KJ and only 6 combos of AA when you start to complain that AA is never 'the hand of the day'!! GL

I suspect your data is wrong because of how unlikely that result would be. The average PP expectation in 677 deals is 40. One standard deviation is +/- 6. So the result you describe would be greater than 6 standard deviations from expectation. It's about 10 million to 1.

For the same reason, a site would never create such an extreme situation artificially if they wanted to cheat.

I did.

Three times in a row.

At the Mirage in the 1990's playing 10/20 limit.

Lost the first two.

Chopped the third when Broadway was achieved by the board cards.

Wow! Tough to talk about "the long run" when that happens!

Yes, you are right. The data is never wrong, it is my analysis that was a problem. I replied about it above.

Yes, in fact overall I am in line with expectation, although lately (couple of days, sample below 1K) was running slightly below, which is fine given the sample.