Reflexions about Linear Hand Strength

[Adrian20XX]

I've just found about Linear Hand Strength in the article A slave to variance.

A long time ago I had a similar idea, cause I thought that what we are constantly are thinking in terms of "distance to the nuts", and so to count the distance to the nuts could be of help. This goes further and provides a normalized metric for "distance to the nuts" for all hands.

I think this could be a concept that could help to explain a lot of things, and I've seen it reflected only in two posts in two plus two:
* The 2+2 Forums: Special Thread For Chen-Ankenman Mathematics of Poker
* The 2+2 Forums: Balancing Bluffs vs Balancing Strategy

A couple of examples of this are:
* A player usually gets stacked when his linear hand strength goes from almost 1 to a bit less than 1. For example he open raises pre flop with AA, and gets stacked by a set of 7s on a flop of T73 with two suited cards "trying to protect" his hand.
* I usually think about players that are good regular that they are very difficult to get stacked with a mediocre hand. They need to have almost second best hand to get stacked in a full ring game. So difficulty to get stacked could be measured numericly with linear hand strength.

Is anyone thinking currently about linear hand strength while they play?
Is anyone aware of any software to calculate it?
Any idea about this?

I've just started ordering "The Mathematics of Poker", hope it will contain something interesting about it.

Regards ...

[TheWorstPlayer]

Uh, this doesnt take into account your opponents at all. This is just as dumb as the Sklansky posts about how many bets the second nuts are worth.

[Adrian20XX]

TheWorstPlayer,

I think Linear Hand Strength is a concept and it can be used as a tool also, nothing prevents it to be used with together with other concepts. If fact all decent players use a usefull concept and tool that is position, and position does not take into account your opponent at all.
Does it mean we should not care about position?

As I pointed, linear hand strength can be used as a tool to take into account your opponent. "How bad is he?" perhaps can be re-expresed in terms of "What linear hand strength does he need to call a push?". "How much is my folding equity against him?" can perhaps can be re-expresed in terms of "What linear hand does this player need to call here?". Thightness and looseness can be expressed in terms of linear hand strength. So I think it could be a great tool also to take into account your opponent in a more precise way.

And the usual advice "don't chase on a paired board" can be a particular case of "don't chase to a linear hand strength < X".

Does this mean "Linear Hand Strength" should be the Holly Grial of poker? Sure not, but I still believe it's a great concept and tool.

Regards ...

[KRANTZ]

oh my god

[JKratzer]

it's good you're trying another approach to poker but trust me on this one, it's a dead end.

[Big_Jim]

Something like this could help a great deal in simplifying some EV calculations.

[Subfallen]

You do realize he's mostly (entirely?) interested in quantifying situations for programmatic purposes? This is the guy who programmed PokerStove.

[cero_z]

[ QUOTE ]
You do realize he's mostly (entirely?) interested in quantifying situations for programmatic purposes? This is the guy who programmed PokerStove.

[/ QUOTE ]

Who are you referring to? Andrew Prock programmed PokerStove, and as I understand it, Andrew Prock is his sn here.

[Big_Jim]

The first link in the OP is to Andrew's blog.

[Adrian20XX]

Subfallen, nice read, you've caught me bluffing AI with 2h3h in the 4h5hKdTc8s board.

I ain't the guy who wrote PokerStove. If I were the guy who wrote it, I would not have any problem posting our my usual id, I don't see what would he gain from posting as another person. In fact he would lose, the guy who wrote PokerStove would get a lot more feedback than me.

And the prove that I ain't the guy who wrote PokerStove can be given to you by stealthcow. He PMd me to offer help to analyze further the SCs with hand ranges, I said that would require automation and that could not be done with the normal version of PokerStove, it would need the command version of PokerStove that costs $300. He insta-offered to pay for it, and I turned the offer down.

I'm interested in this type of things cause I come from a math background and, I think that a lot of the discussions are specific cases of much general discussions, so it is much more interesting (and also much more complex) to analyze the general case.

Anyway, you think to read my post are EV- for you, your better play would be to fold to them.

Regards ...