Q7, the computer hand?

[Nomad84]

50% equity against a random hand is not the same thing as the median hand. Finding the median hand would involve finding the equity of each possible starting hand against a random hand, then ranking them in order of equity. The 85th one would be the median since there are 169 possible starting hands.

[nuts]

It's called the computer hand because it came out as the weakest profitable hand in a computer simulation of all starting hands (not the median hand).

[Rick Nebiolo]

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It's called the computer hand because it came out as the weakest profitable hand in a computer simulation of all starting hands (not the median hand).

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How do you define "profitable"?

In a head up simulation against a random hand it wins about 51.7% of the time (trials done on 1 million hands using Caro's old DOS based Poker Probe and enumeration on Andrew Prock's Pokerstove).

As mentioned above there are other hands that are still better than 50% but worse than Q7o.

~ Rick

[Rick Nebiolo]

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I heard that Q7o is the median hand in a heads up PF situation. But it comes out at a 51.766% favorite against a random hand on PokerTracker.

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That was what I heard years ago. But I just downloaded version 1.2 of Pokerstove and my results agree with yours. As mentioned elsewhere Q4 offsuit does come closer to 50/50 heads up using these tools.

In my deep storage are some old poker books, including a book of holdem computer simulations by someone I think was named Mike Barry. If memory serves he wrote his own shuffling algorithm and computer simulator and his book came up with the term first (or readers of his book did). If so, it's possible his algorithm and simulator (this was about 1985) were flawed compared to Pokerstove and even Caro's Probe.

~ Rick

[Borgland]

How did A-5 get the term "Wheel"?

[Rick Nebiolo]

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How did A-5 get the term "Wheel"?

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Not sure. It's also called a "bicycle" and bicycle's have wheels. Maybe that's it.

~ Rick

[KinkyKid]

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How did A-5 get the term "Wheel"?

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It starts with the highest card, then circles around the deck to number 2. Hence, "wheel".

[snoopdawg]

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How did A-5 get the term "Wheel"?

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I always thought it was because in Ace to five lowball A2345 is called a wheel. But you guys are probalby wondeing how they got that term.

[jjigglers]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
How did A-5 get the term "Wheel"?

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I always thought it was because in Ace to five lowball A2345 is called a wheel. But you guys are probalby wondeing how they got that term.

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But then again, in deuce to seven lowball, the 23457 is called the wheel. I really have no clue. I think I remember seeing the explanation in SS1 or SS2, but I'm not sure.

[Ray Zee]

it got that name as a tandy computer was used to run simulations in the 1970's. the generator repeated at 1000 hands i think or less. so by accident queen seven showed up to be the best starting two cards. the guy that did it was from kalispell. named robert zarobsky. and put out a little computer holdem book. so since it was obviously silly and wrong it got the nickname computer hand. so now you know the real story.