2-7 CP Questions!

[AndyatSD]

Hi,

New to posting in this sub-forum but I've been lurking for a while. I just started playing Chinese Poker last month and I’m so addicted. I’ve played on TigerGaming and recently half my weekends at Commerce has been spent on Chinese Poker. I understand the math behind CP high, but last weekend was my first time playing 2-7 CP. I got some guidance from TT and Deathdonkey on this but I still had some more questions and DD suggested I post it in the forum so here goes. Thanks in advance for any pointers! =)

1) What is the average (say, 50%) strength of hand to win the middle low? Intuitively I’d think the breaking point is the worst possible 8 / best possible 9, but I’m not too sure. Also, how big of a difference does going from a medium 8 to a good 9 make? For example, using CP high front hand terms, is the relative difference between going from a 25678 to a 23469 bigger than going from JJ to KK in the front? Is there somewhere to study the math for this?

2) I been following the intuitive strategy of ‘make the best possible low hand without severely crippling yourself, and break minor stuff up if I can make a competitive low’. I had thought that a competitive low worth breaking things up for was like a 9, but DD says even a 9 is a crying call at best and it’s probably better to go for a strong front/back rather than to break up all but the weakest stuffs for the middle. Thoughts on that?

3) This might be wrong, but while I noticed that hand strength in the front severely went up (anyone have the math?) to the point that 22-QQ owns trash and gets owned by anything more legitimate, I did notice that the back average value to win seem to have decreased. I reasoned this is because 20 lowball cards have to be used for the low hands so that greatly decreases the chances of making low straights. Not only that, but since there’s a lot more flexibility in getting the trips up in front, people do that to try to get a more secure lock in one of the three hands, thereby decreasing the chances of fullhouse in the back. The result that I observed was that flushes was much more common in the back. I also think this is because when you have something like 223467889 while the best possible low in that hand is 23467, if you can make a flush with some of the cards and make a 8 or 9 low and you couldn’t otherwise make a single darn thing in the back, you’d go with the flush and the 8 low (9 low a bit closer call)? So if that theory is true, then to me that means the value of the higher cards in the flush has substantially increased. Can anyone confirm/deny?

And all in all if anyone has recommendations on how to do the calculations for a modified win probability table for 2-7 CP I’d greatly appreciate some help. Thanks!

~andy