Tournament Poker for Advanced Players

[Rocco]

Ok... Here it comes. Are you any good at maths? Combinatorics?

There are 1326 possible distinct ways to be dealt any starting hand in Texas Hold'em. Sklansky's all-in hands are any pair, any ace-suited, any suited connector down except 43s and 32s, and AKo...

So...

Pairs:
AA-22 is 13 pairs and since there's 6 possible ways to be dealt a pair we have 13x6=78 combinations

Suited hands:
There are 4 ways to be dealt a suited hand. We have AKs down to 54s which is 10 hands. Then we have AQs-A2s which is 11 hands, so 21 in total. That makes 21x4=84 combinations.

A random hand like AKo can be dealt in 12 different ways. So we have 78+84+12=174 combinations. Remember there's 1326 different combinations in total?

174/1326 = 0,131 ~ 13%

Voila! Now that you know, you can continue reading the book [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]