Way to figure chances of a remaining opponent having a better hand?

[Shroomy]

Im sure there must be a way to figure what the chances are that you have the best hand when you contemplate opening the pot and know how many people remain to act.


for example I have ATo with the button and the blinds to act after me and am thinking of pushing all in, what is the chance that someone has a better hand than I do?

I cant think of how to do it without going into hand distributions and enough math that I find that there is not enough time for me to figure it out in live play.

Im sure someone here can point me in the right direction [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

thanks

[whynot?]

think you're asking slightly the wrong question - think the real question is what are the chances of someone playing back at me if i push/make a play at the pot? not having a better hand just calling your push - very different things

the general rule of thumb i use at the table is folks (until proven otherwise) will call with roughly the top 10% of hands. that means with two left to get through each has a 10% chance of calling therefore you'll get through both 81% of the time. think you can do the math easily from there - if you think the guys are real LAGs and call with top 20% then its .8 twice or 64% of the time

hope this helps

[whynot?]

and oh btw - stack sizes make a huge diff in what %s to use

if your short the chances of getting called go up dramitically - if your the big stack on the bubble the chances of getting called decreases dramatically - just need to assess

[Shroomy]

[ QUOTE ]
think you're asking slightly the wrong question - think the real question is what are the chances of someone playing back at me if i push/make a play at the pot? not having a better hand just calling your push - very different things

[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks for the reply, and your right they are very different things. What I was trying to get at was a situation I have seen more and more, which is having a medium to short stack towards the end and having the players behind me be in a situation where I KNOW that they will call with any "reasonable" hand.

Either they are also short (or have me covered several times over) or the blinds are so high in relation to the total chips that they are forced to play any decent cards.

So I was trying to figure my chances of having the best hand, and use that as part of my decision.

I think I may just have to figure out what hand wins 50% of the time for 6,5 and 4 opponents so I can get a general idea of my hand having a better than average chance of winning.

[InternetJunky]

One of the Full Tilt "Tips from the pros" deals with your exact question. There's something like 60 of those tips now though so it may take a while to find the right one. Hope you can find it. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[betgo]

If you push with AT on the button any dominating hand will call and you don't mind getting called by other hands, so the question is relevant.

There is a 8/663 chance of any unpaired hand like AK and a 3/663 chance of any pp. So there is a 39/663 chance anyone has AJ-AK, TT-AA or 5.9%. Now since no one played before you, there is more chance the blinds have high cards, but since you have two broadway cards, there is less chance. There is some chance both players have dominating hands, but this is unlikely with only two players. So there is a little less than 12% chance that anyone has you dominated.

Now if you push AT UTG into 9 players, there is about a 40% chance you are dominated, although you won't always get called by AJ or TT.

That's why pushing AT from the button is a lot better than pushing it UTG.

[Beachman42]

FWIW, there is a chapter in HOH V2 called SHAL or Structured Hand Analysis that goes off the deep end in this situation. If you follow along you can develop a fairly good answer to this question.

[Shroomy]

Thanks InternetJunky

and betgo... PERFECT, thanks thats exactly what I was looking for and I should have thought to look at it that way... I [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 2+2