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.)

I'm close to exact numbers. I've been using https://flopsy.io to learn. It's a tool focused on teaching you how quickly calculate possible/blocked combos in villain's range.

I think you are way off. The typical hand reading strategy is to:

- Start at preflop with 100% range.
- For each villain spot, discard hands that would have taken another line
- Continue on the next spot with the previous range.

In almost all situations unsuited cards are folded way more often than suited cards.

On a similar note:

You are not and you shouldn't.

While you can get exact calculations in situations where there is no human action involved (like the odds of being dealt XX) in almost all situations there's human action involved, in which case you can only approximate their strategy, for example, they are calling 20% of their range with a linear ranking or they are cbetting 50% of the time with AKs.

When performing mathematical operations of two numbers with different precision, the result has the precision of the smallest operand. For example:

10% of 852.48 is ~85

To say that your result is 85.248 is to have more precision than is actually afforded by your methods of calculation, and is an inappropriate overconfidence in your results.

https://archive.org/details/physicsforibdipl0000tsok

I was just wondering how useful is combo counting in actual situation? I became very interested in this and have been trying hard to exercise it. Realised that I am not very good at it. I understand it is useful especially when villain bets x size of pot, u can decide to fold/raise/call. U can use the combo to calculate the probability by estimating his range vs your range and if he is overbetting/bluffing or what you are blocking...etc

I have been trying the "choose 2" method and sometimes I calculated it inaccurately, I think I applied the method wrongly. As this method calculates suited combos and non suited altogether.



Please correct me if I am wrong.

what is the normal situation where u use choose 2 as a method to count? i realized that mostly it is better to multiply the cards that are still available. Example: 3 Kings and 4 Jacks left in deck = 12 possible combos. (3 of which are suited)