Tuesday, January 16, 2007
Card Dead - You decide
So on my first visit to my new favorite card room, Motor City, I won $110. Whoo Hoo! This was simply amazing considering how card dead I was. I'll give you some of the gory details in a second.
After waiting around 45 minute to get a seat, I faced a tough dilemma.
They just opened a new table and called my name. I bought my chips placed them on the table. Just then a seat opened up at a table that had 3 of the regulars from my home games. I really wanted to chill with these guys and play some poker so I "locked up" this seat and went to retrieve my chips off of the other table. As I was loading up my chips, I looked around the table and noticed that this new table was populated with the geriatic crew. The bus must have just arrived from the nursing home. I was surprised they could fit 10 of us around the table with all of those oxyegen tanks and walkers.
OK, so that's a little mean spirited. No disrespect intended to the older players (of which I'm rapidly becoming). Anyway, I had to make one of those snap stereotype decisions. My previous learnings on the importance of seat selection was not lost. So, I chose to play with the senior citizens. It's been my experience that older players, in general, are pretty tight/predictable...and they just may forget the ranking of hands and think that 2 pair beats a flush.
Card Dead
So I started with a full buy in and went card dead. I didn't see a turn or river card for 2 hours. I know this since I started playing at exactly 12:30p and won my first pot at 2:30. I swear to god, I didn't have one hand that I could play post flop.
For the 3 hour session. I had 2 pocket pairs (7s and 10s). I had 1 AK and 1 AJ. That's it. That's the only premium starting hands I had in 3 hours. I had 4 premium hands in 3 hours.
So this got me to thinking. What are the odds of being dealt only 2 pocket pairs in 3 hours?
Here we go.
So there are 169 starting hand combinations in Hold'em (when you exclude suits). Everyone knows that...right? There are 13 different combinations of paired starting hands AA through 22 (once again ignoring suits). So 13 out of 169 starting hands include pairs. This means that you have about an 8% chance of being dealt a pocket pair on each deal. If skillful dealers at Motor City can cranks out 30 hands an hour and I played for 3 hours, I saw 90 hands.
So what are the odds that I would be dealt only 2 pocket pairs in 90 hands when I expect to be dealt 7 pocket pairs in 90 hands (8% x 90 hands)?
For this is used the handy dandy poisson disribution and found that to be 3.5%. Pretty slim hu?
Please let me know if I got this wrong.
After waiting around 45 minute to get a seat, I faced a tough dilemma.
They just opened a new table and called my name. I bought my chips placed them on the table. Just then a seat opened up at a table that had 3 of the regulars from my home games. I really wanted to chill with these guys and play some poker so I "locked up" this seat and went to retrieve my chips off of the other table. As I was loading up my chips, I looked around the table and noticed that this new table was populated with the geriatic crew. The bus must have just arrived from the nursing home. I was surprised they could fit 10 of us around the table with all of those oxyegen tanks and walkers.
OK, so that's a little mean spirited. No disrespect intended to the older players (of which I'm rapidly becoming). Anyway, I had to make one of those snap stereotype decisions. My previous learnings on the importance of seat selection was not lost. So, I chose to play with the senior citizens. It's been my experience that older players, in general, are pretty tight/predictable...and they just may forget the ranking of hands and think that 2 pair beats a flush.
Card Dead
So I started with a full buy in and went card dead. I didn't see a turn or river card for 2 hours. I know this since I started playing at exactly 12:30p and won my first pot at 2:30. I swear to god, I didn't have one hand that I could play post flop.
For the 3 hour session. I had 2 pocket pairs (7s and 10s). I had 1 AK and 1 AJ. That's it. That's the only premium starting hands I had in 3 hours. I had 4 premium hands in 3 hours.
So this got me to thinking. What are the odds of being dealt only 2 pocket pairs in 3 hours?
Here we go.
So there are 169 starting hand combinations in Hold'em (when you exclude suits). Everyone knows that...right? There are 13 different combinations of paired starting hands AA through 22 (once again ignoring suits). So 13 out of 169 starting hands include pairs. This means that you have about an 8% chance of being dealt a pocket pair on each deal. If skillful dealers at Motor City can cranks out 30 hands an hour and I played for 3 hours, I saw 90 hands.
So what are the odds that I would be dealt only 2 pocket pairs in 90 hands when I expect to be dealt 7 pocket pairs in 90 hands (8% x 90 hands)?
For this is used the handy dandy poisson disribution and found that to be 3.5%. Pretty slim hu?
Please let me know if I got this wrong.
