What would be the best limit to start at?
 

I am a NL Hold 'Em player with basically no experience with stud except for about 100 hands I played the other day at .04/.08 just to try it out. I have a $4000 roll on PokerStars, but I don't think that diving right into the $5/$10 games would be the best way to start learning 7CS. What level of stakes do you think would be the best compromise between hourly rate and learning curve for a competent SSNL Hold 'Em player?

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

I'd probably choose a limit where it wouldn't tilt you to lose 50-100bb. Not that I'm saying you'll lose it, but you should feel free to lose while you're learning, if possible. Maybe 1/2? That might not be enough to even be interesting for you, not sure. 2/4 is the sweet spot, rake wise, on FTP (smallest avg rake/100 hands). That's the real problem with the smallest stakes.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Honestly It may be grueling for you, but .25/.50 is forgivng and has a good learning curve. I'm pretty sure poker stars has a .5 ante .10 bring in. If you're not afraid to lose in order to learn .50/1 isn't too bad, more solid.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

I think the answer is really whatever you are comfortable with. And by comfortable, I mean comfortable losing while you practice up.

Given that you have a pretty good roll and may know some applicable basic poker theory, I would start at at least 1/2, otherwise you are probably going to learn some bad habits if you intend to move up (though maybe .5/1 on stars, though I havent played it in years). Once you get out of playing for change there is some semblance of a game that doesn't always have 6+ players to 4th every hand. If you have the time, maybe you want to read up before playing at all.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Forget about stud and play 3/6 razz there. The low antes mean the "tight is right" basic strategy will work well, the games run often and usually with multiple tables going (tho I'd recommend not playing more than 2 at a time), and they are charmin, pure charmin.

Good Luck!

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

I'd go with 1-2

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Razz is a blast, but wouldn't it be better to start with stud8 at first? The high and low seems to keep my variance down a good bit.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Razz is a blast, but wouldn't it be better to start with stud8 at first? The high and low seems to keep my variance down a good bit.

[/ QUOTE ]
Split pot games do have lower variance than their Hi only cousins, but razz naturally has lower variance than omaha, HE, or stud. On top of that if you stay out of marginal situations that usually need to go to showdown to get paid off (like marginal bring-in defense), and forgo thin value-only bets, you can reduce the variance in razz substantially. You may even improve your game and develop more than one gear [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Great now you tell me how to lower variance in razz. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I started with stud8 to build my bankrole, but would much rather have learned razz first.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Split pot games do have lower variance than their Hi only cousins, but razz naturally has lower variance than omaha, HE, or stud.

[/ QUOTE ] Can you say why, please? I read (it's in my early notes - and don't know from where)that Razz is higher variance - I thought it was because so many times you end up having to go to the river when you have a better draw. But if what you say is true, and I imagine it is, then if I knew why it could really help my game.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Can you say why, please? I read (it's in my early notes - and don't know from where)that Razz is higher variance - I thought it was because so many times you end up having to go to the river when you have a better draw. But if what you say is true, and I imagine it is, then if I knew why it could really help my game.

[/ QUOTE ]
The explanation is in your location [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

You're a razzmaniac, right? Well, if you play razz like a maniac you're going to get into a lot of big pots with people who think you're a maniac and want to call you down or raise you when they hit a big draw, etc. Then you experience high variance in razz (and post about it in the forums), even if you're good enough to make that style work and be a winning player. If you play more conservatively, you can stay out of many high variance situations. Even going to the river with the best draw isn't all that high variance because you typically stand a much better chance of hitting in razz. You may only win 1 out of 3 pots in that scenario, but you often have to play much thinner draws in other games, or you are RAISING with big draws rather than calling. Two bets > one bet, so the variance in razz is somewhat lower.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Even going to the river with the best draw isn't all that high variance because you typically stand a much better chance of hitting in razz. You may only win 1 out of 3 pots in that scenario,

[/ QUOTE ]Thank you, this all makes a lot of sense to me.

I understand that I have to be getting better than three to one on my money to go to the river on a good draw if I am only going to win one out of three times.

But am I? Going to win one out of three? And if I am, how do we know that? I just can't find these things written anywhere, it seems to be some kind of poker folk wisdom. (I am a huge admirer of folk wisdom, BTW.)



oh yeah - and my razzmania only applies to my love for the game - a try not to play too many real big pots - well - unless I have a nice 5 or 64, acourse!

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

You can generally calculate whether you'll be ahead on the next card, given an assumption about your opponent's current strength. It's basic arithmatic, I can lead you through it if you're interested.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
You can generally calculate whether you'll be ahead on the next card, given an assumption about your opponent's current strength. It's basic arithmatic, I can lead you through it if you're interested.

[/ QUOTE ]

Can I do it in 15 seconds or less?

Seriously, I'd like to see a simple way to do it, not for my math-broken self, but I think a lot of folks would like that. (Understand my math ability stops at being able to figure out on a food label if the calories in the fat are greater than or less than 20% of the total calories, or how much off the price I'm getting if I save 30% - if you can make it that simple I'll be eternally gratful.)

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

I'm working out and playing simultaneous at the moment (well, a bit of each at a time I guess)

I'll post something later. It's an approximation, and it's not really any harder than figuring out your odds of drawing to a flush in holdem. Although you can't memorize, you have to do a little counting.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
oh yeah - and my razzmania only applies to my love for the game - a try not to play too many real big pots - well - unless I have a nice 5 or 64, acourse!

[/ QUOTE ]

Now now, I didn't mean that you played like a maniac, just that those players who do will experience much more variance than conservative players. Also I just pulled the 1 time out of 3 figure out of thin air, but to give you a reference if you have a wheel draw on 6th you will suck out on a made 96 about 1/3 of the time.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

I started to type something up. Before I go to much further, Prax, I'm assuming you know how to figure out how often you'll outdraw your opponent's current hand? If so, I won't need to explain that and it'll simplify things greatly.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
I started to type something up. Before I go to much further, Prax, I'm assuming you know how to figure out how often you'll outdraw your opponent's current hand? If so, I won't need to explain that and it'll simplify things greatly.

[/ QUOTE ]Why would you make such a silly assumption?

SG - I knew you didn't mean me!

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Well, OK, let's start there. You need to count how many cards will improve your hand to a hand that is better than what you think your opponent has. I leave figuring out what your opponent has an excercise to the reader [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

Also, you need to figure out how many unknown cards there are. This is 52 - however many cards you have seen exposed so far. Don't go overboard trying to count these... on 6th st, if the hand was heads up from the beginning, there are 36 cards unknown. You know your 6, your opponents up 4, and 6 door cards from the people who folded 3rd. Obviously adjust downwards if lots of people saw 4th.

So, let's say you counted your outs, and there are 15 of them, and you've been heads up the whole way, so there are 36 cards left. That means you'll hit your draw 15/36 times. I'm going to cheat and call this 15/35 because that's almost the same anyway, and 15/35 is 3/7, which in odds speak is 3:4 (3 times you hit, 4 times you don't)

This is the absolute upper bound on your drawing odds. The real number is always lower than this, because for at least some of your outs, your opponent can draw a better card, improving also, and beat the hand you just drew to.

This number is not that useful except to know that it's never better than this. If this number does not justify a call, you must fold. If it DOES justify a call, you need to do some more digging. If this makes sense to you, I'll move on.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Rusty, let's see if we can get this to be something a person like myself can actually use. Maybe let's start with one scenario and see if we can come up with a rule of thumb of some kind. Let's say I am only concerned with a wheel draw. I am on 6th and I have A345JK. My single opponent has xx4767 and my 15 seconds are ticking away. I have even had the foresight to jot down the cards under 9 on the board that were folded and they were a 6, 2 and 8. If he doesn't improve, I can beat this guy with a 7, 6 or 2.

This means that someplace in the deck are 7 cards that I can win with. 7 out of 36. Even I know 7 times 5 is 35 and can see I have a 1 in 5 chance. Or do I have a 1 in 6 chance? (I never remember that.) Anyway, looks like 20% to me.

In a standardly played hand, we'd have the antes and bring-in, a call and a completion on 3rd. Then a bet/call on both 4th and 5th. So, what is that? Four BBs? But he's gone ahead and bet and I'm deciding whether to call. So now we've got five. Five to one. Nice how it all works out, because of course we will now count the bets that are coming. At least 2 more unless I can get this turkey to call a raise.

So, this is why we raise with a better draw, right? So we always have the odds to call to the river in a limit game where we can, simply by the nature of the game, know we have the pot odds to call.

I'm trying to think of a common scenario where we'd actually have 15 outs by the time we have 6 cards. If his hand was that bad, I think I wouldn't need to calculate anything to know I am seeing the river.

I swear to you, Rusty, I don't try to be difficult, but what we are trying to do is always create this situation that makes is mathematically correct to keep putting in bets when what is probabilistically reasonable is to fold. So we raise third and reraise with three-wheels. And we hope and hope that those sets of 4 times we lose out of 5 or 5 times we lose out of 6 or whatever aren't all lined up back-to-back for months at a time.

You know, the thing is, it isn't we who will win 20% of the time, it is <u>that hand</u> that will win. What if when that hand wins it is the guy across the table who wins with it and we aren't even in the hand? What if the time we get the hand that would win, we get the bricks on 4th and 5th and can't get enough money in to see 6th and 7th? Or we were just out-of-position on 3rd and couldn't get a raise in and *had* to fold 4th? What if it wins four times in a row in a tournament and we go out before the money and we've used up all our wins for the next month and lose more of that money we shoved in so we could call?

I have to say, I think odds make a lot of sense in holdem and probably in stud hi or Omaha. And I think talented persons like yourself who get it and get it lightning fast can make a lot of money and I admire you, believe me.

But even if I can do it, in Razz, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't do it. It just doesn't make a bit of sense to me.

I'm sorry, thank you for trying. Seriously. You should write this up, anyway, because there are people lurking here who'd really like the info.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Also, you need to figure out how many unknown cards there are. This is 52 - however many cards you have seen exposed so far. Don't go overboard trying to count these... on 6th st, if the hand was heads up from the beginning, there are 36 cards unknown. You know your 6, your opponents up 4, and 6 door cards from the people who folded 3rd. Obviously adjust downwards if lots of people saw 4th.

So, let's say you counted your outs, and there are 15 of them, and you've been heads up the whole way, so there are 36 cards left. That means you'll hit your draw 15/36 times. I'm going to cheat and call this 15/35 because that's almost the same anyway, and 15/35 is 3/7, which in odds speak is 3:4 (3 times you hit, 4 times you don't)


[/ QUOTE ]

I'd say as a quick rule of thumb that if you have remembered two other door cards then there are 33 cards left in the pack. This means that each out is around 3%. So in the above case 15 x 3 = 45% chance of hitting. If there are 40 unknown cards then each out is 2.5% so 15 x 2.5 = 37.5%

Of course this situation is usually an obvious play. Now assuming you had a draw to the wheel only with 4 outs. SO your chances of hitting are between 10 and 12%, eg. a 9/1

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

If you can beat him with a 7, 6, or a 2 and you've already seen a 2, 6 and an 8, then you actually have 10 outs (3 twos, 3 sixes, 4 sevens) 10/36 is basically 2/7 or 2.5:1 against. Basically not quite as often as 1/3.

In actuality you will win less than this. You are drawing to beat your opponent's 76 but he's drawing to a 6 as well. If you'll make a 7 about 1/3 of the time, he'll make a 6 less than 1/3 of the time (more like 20% of the time). So if you get a 7 you'll still be outdrawin 1 time in 5, so you don't count 7s as full outs. That doesn't change things much in this case because you still have 6 full outs for the 2s and 6s and then 3.2 "adjusted" outs for the 7s. I'd call this 9 outs. 9/33 isn't that different than 10/33 so in this case, no big whoop.

However, when your opponent's current hand might be an 85, and you have the same draw as before, now only your 2 is totally clean, because he might outdraw you and make a wheel, or a 6. This means you need to discount your 7s and 6s. The actual amount to discount takes some thought but you'll never be toooo far off to discount them by 1/4 in a case like this. If you have a much worse hand like a T and you're drawing to an 8, and your opponent current has like a 96 (9, drawing to a 6) then you need to discount more heavily, more like 1/3. This is like how in holdem if you're drawing to an open ended straight, and you think your opponent *might* be drawing to a flush, then you have to consider the outs of the flush suit as only partial outs, because when you get them you'll make your straight, but might lose to a flush.

We inflate the pot on 3rd sometimes as kind of insurance (there are other reasons to raise, and certainly reasons not to). We're trying to make sure we can see 5th without making a bad call on 4th, because we think that with more cards dealt our chances of outplaying our opponent are larger, and we're removing an obvious spot where we could get outplayed on 4th.

Personally I don't share your fatalism regarding poker, but even if you are destined to lose the next 4 times that you are drawing to a wheel, it doesn't matter, unless you think that you will lose more often, in the long run, than probability says you will. If you do, then I swear I'll never mention probability to you again [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img] If you don't, then you'll have to accept that when you are in a situation where you will win 1/3 times, but don't know which times, then you just need to relax and understand that as long as you are acting in a way where you will profit if you win 1/3 times, then, in the long run, you will profit.

Put another way if you offered me a chance to win $2 for every time that a coin came up heads, and I'd pay $1 for each toss, I'd take it. I'd take it for $20/$10 also. Or $200/$100. Or $2000/$1000. At some point I might decline because losing would wipe me out - this is why we don't play in games above our bankroll even if we are likely to win at them.

Anyway, I *might* hit 10 tails in a row. Does this mean I made a bad bet? Of course not, and I'd make the same bet again. We play the same situations over and over and over and over again, the probability levels out and as long as we make the right decision, we make money.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Personally I don't share your fatalism regarding poker, but even if you are destined to lose the next 4 times that you are drawing to a wheel, it doesn't matter, unless you think that you will lose more often, in the long run, than probability says you will.

[/ QUOTE ]I think of it as realism rather than fatalism, I've yet to see the research that proves the hypothesis that theory of large numbers applies to poker in this way. Ultimately, you'd have to find all situations where the pot odds are the same, played out to showdown, and see what the profit/loss is over a large number of hands for a large number of players. The specific hands would be irrelevant, the limit would be irrelevant, (tho' it must be limit games of the same type in the data set) the odds are the control and the money is the irreducible result.

I'm sure that f played out, the hands do win as often as probability says they will within an error range. I taught genetics, I know what a balanced polymorphism is and it depends for it's "balance" on the Law of Large Numbers. But I also know that law is indifferent to the individual, I also know there is founder effect, and while I am convinced the hand will win as expected, I am not convinced a player does. And even if the player does, I'm not at all sure that means all players will profit. Most especially in Razz.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Realistically the odds we're talking here do not require large numbers to work themselves out, because the probabilities are not that small. In fact it's pretty easy to figure out how many times you need to look at a given situation to see if it settles down to, say, within 1% of the expected value, and the number is something like 1500 times. I don't know about you, but I've had way more than 1500 flush draws in my life. Probably more like 50,000.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Actually, you probably need a lot more trials than that to have a strong chance of being within 1% of the expected value.

For instance, the number of heads expected in a coin flip is 0.5 with 0.5 standard deviation.

Flip 10,000 coins, and the expected value goes up by a factor of 10,000. The standard deviation goes up by the square root of that, or by a factor of 100.

So flip 10,000 coins, and you expect 5,000 heads with a standard deviation of 50. So +/- 1% from the expected value is one standard deviation. The chance to fall within 1 std. dev. of a normally distributed probability is about 2/3. So if you flip a coin 10,000 times, the chance that it will NOT be within +/- 1% is a relatively high 1/3 probability.

To get +/- 1% to represent 3 standard deviations (giving you about a 99% chance of being within that range), you'd need to flip 90,000 coins.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

That doesn't seem right. I'll haul out the formula after lunch. Real quick, though, I wrote a program that flips coins. It does N trials, K times.

For each time, I run N flips, and record the number of heads. If the average # of heads is more than 1% from the EV then I increment a counter. Here are my results, running 100 times with different trial sizes.

1000: 47/100
5000: 86/100
10000: 93/100
15000: 98/100
20000: 100/100 (I ran this 5 times, same result every time)

So for a coin flip, the worst case looks like 20k which is worst than I thought, so I need to look at my formula again.

I ran this with 1000-sized runs also, similar results. I can post code if you like.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Still too lazy to look up my formula, but one program tweak later and as far as I can see it, the 95% confident mark (95% of the time, it's within 1% of EV for N trials) happens for N=~8800

50/50 should be the worst case scenario, also.

In fact for grins I just tried 75/25 and you get to 95% confidence with N=~7200

For 90/10 I get N=~3600

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

[ QUOTE ]
Still too lazy to look up my formula, but one program tweak later and as far as I can see it, the 95% confident mark (95% of the time, it's within 1% of EV for N trials) happens for N=~8800

[/ QUOTE ]

I think your random number generator must have some "issues" if that's true.

The actual probability that if you flip a coin 8800 times, that the number of heads will be 4400 +/ 1% is only 65.7%.

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

My RNG is fine. Possibly the program is flawed in some way.

The formula I'm going on is this

N &gt;= p * (1 - p) * (z_alpha/2) / epsilon^2

p is the EV
z_alpha is the Z value for your confidence interval.
epsilon is your acceptable margin of error

z_alpha I get as 1.6449 for confidence interval of .95
p * (1-p) is obviously .25

When I plug-n-chug I get N &gt;= 8224
Which matches my experimental results.

Now, I admit that I am no statistician, but I consulted with one before starting to use this formula for my simulation work. I use this simulation to figure out how many iterations I need to do, to be "close enough" to the real value for simulation.

Maybe we should post this to the probability forum?

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Rusty, I think most likely it's just a semantic difference in how we're treating +/- 1%.

To me, if the EV is 4400 (in 8800 trials), +/- 1% is the range [4356...4444]. The +/- 1% being one percent of the EV.

It looks like you're using +/- 1% being the range [4312...4488]. The +/- 1% being one percent of the number of trials.


Using my interpretation of 1%, the chance of being within the range is 65.7%. Using your interpretation, the chance of being within the range is 94.1%.


I'll show you why I think my interpretation is more useful: say that the chance of winning a particular game is 1% per attempt, and you win 200 times in 10000 trials. Your win rate is 2% per attempt. Are you running 1% above expectation, or are you running 100% above expectation?

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

Ah, yes, I am talking about 1% of the total number of trials. The difference is of course most notable for very small values of EV, although clearly it drastically affects the number of needed trials.

Honestly, I think 1% is a pretty freakin tight boundary and most people would feel that probability holds even if they deviate more than a percent or two from expected value.

Edit: at least I'm not crazy. I spent a couple hours this afternoon idly pondering (while doing other stuff) how we got such different numbers. I arrived at the same number by 3 different methods (observation, the formula I listed here, and another method)

Re: What would be the best limit to start at?
 

ummm...uh...hmmmm...

Yeah, what they said!



My issue with all of this in play is simply: people have made dogma of that which is still hypothetical. My issue with it in forums is: posters will insist a player behavior should change based solely on the "evidence" from an unproven hypothesis.

Again I say - anyone who wants to play this way should. And in threads say, "I'd do it this way for this reason." But it might be time for everyone to stop telling those who choose wider criteria for making poker decisions that their play is bad. At least, until some data supports that conclusion.