JacobSanford.com

This weekend went to Halifax for Dyker’s wedding. Really great time - good ceremony and great meal at Alderney Landing and it was really good to see Adam and Erin again. Stayed in Jennie’s apartment Friday and drove back Saturday after the supper and got in around midnight.

Had to rush around an hour before the wedding and get a shirt that actually fit me.

Played some craps at the casino Friday night and won $11.50! Despite Olivia and Jennie’s insistence that I play a ‘field’ bet every throw , which I did twice and actually won despite the odds:

Field bet: This is a one time bet that the next roll will be a 2,3,4,9,10,11, or 12. The 3,4,9,10, and 11 pay even money and the 2 and 12 pay 2-1. In some casinos, largely confined to downtown Las Vegas, the 12 will pay 3-1. Some casinos pay on 5 instead of the 9. If the 12 pays 2-1 the house edge is 5.56%, if the 12 pays 3-1 the house edge is 2.78%. On the surface this seems like a great bet because 7 numbers win and only 4 lose. However the 4 that lose are much more likely to be rolled.

The poker tables were out of control. Huge lines to play the 5/10 and the 15/30 table was full. WAY too much money for me, too bad they can’t afford to pay dealers with the rake at any lower limits.

Just back from Cape Breton where Dave got married. Classy wedding with a fantastic meal. Stayed at a Quality Inn with a pool so I got swimming once and made it to the Casino Friday night after the family party. Won some cash playing blackjack and then just broke even. There were no craps availible so I didn’t play too much. Dave did well, pocketing $35.

Watched a fellow drop $400 in 5 minutes at the blackjack table. He had some HARD luck.

Drive was long both ways but we got to stop in and see where Kara’s parents live. Really cool people and a great house - semi secluded with a really nice backyard.

My calorie limited intake took a huge hit this weekend as well. Oh well, I was back to normal yesterday. Borrowed my father’s car instead of renting one for Dyke’s wedding this weekend. A crazy amount of nuptuals going on lately - who will be next? I should make a poll.

Can’t wait to hit up the Ardmoor Tea room in Hfx.

Did up this Maple sheet about hitting a streak of pairing the board. As you can see past 2-3 hands it gets pretty unlikely.

Not sure what I’ll do next. Just a quick comp for this morning.

Holdem Pair Math
Props out to Professor Brian Alspach for his site
Jacob Sanford

Calculate the Possible Number of Total 7 card hands

Calculate the possible number of boards with you holding 2 cards.

Calculate the possible number of FLOPS with you holding 2 cards

Calculate the number of flops you will not hit at least a pair holding 2 different cards on the flop

From this, calculate the fraction of flops where you WILL hit a pair

Turn this into a decimal

Now find the likelyhood of holding consecutive flop-pairing hands.

Due to a string of horrible beats lately I’ve decided to take some time off and run some math on various poker hands/outcomes instead of playing. I’ll be using Maple 8 and I’m sure most of the methods will be plagarized from various poker sources and put into one document, which I will call:

Jake’s Review of Poker Math

Last night I was doing some thinking and ran some simulations with Wilson’s holdem software and came up with some numbers that basically matched what I thought. This study has little scientific basis - randomized 1,000,000 hands to showdown with no betting. Later on I include some theory which no doubt creates a poorly devised experiment-theory hybrid.

So here is the first in the series:

But really - to get a total average standoff percentage we need to realize that AK suited is much less likely than AK unsuited, or matching at least 1 suit between the two is more likely than not. So given that all cards have an equal chance of being dealt, we can write a few lists to discover the probabilities.

And Finally:

So AK is a dog by 2.8% over 1,000,000 hands. Nothing really new there but interesting to see it evolve.

Just a few notes about split pots - these can only occur when a 5 cards appear on the board that beat both hands. So Straight, Some Full Houses, Straight Flush, Flush (Four of a kind is possible to split only when the overcard connectors do not contain an Ace). Of these, only the flushes depend on suit, and as the data indicates - as matching suits increase, so do the split pots (Albeit slightly, but due to more ‘other’ suited cards existing in the deck to give the non-matching flush).

Also consider that AK are the worst connecting overcards to have (by a slight amount) when going up against a low pocket, due mainly to straight possibilities. I’ll prove this to you in future posts, but if you think that you’re against low pockets - you’re better off playing J-10 and the like. However, if we showdown AK and J10 it would be quite apparent the good money was on big slick.

On to the next problem!