I'm not sure if this is easy or hard for math guys, but I am trying to work out the formula to find out what chance that either the small blind OR big blind has a good hand.

eg. If I push from the button late in a sng, what is the chance that either blind has an AQ+ or 88+ hand.

does that make sense? any help would be appreciated!

ok so 7 pairs x 6 combo's and 2 non pairs (AK,AQ) x 16 combo's = 60 pos combo's
1326 posible number of starting hands (52*51)/2 (?)
so answer is 60/1326 and 60/1326 = 9%

? maths....me bad.

is that it? I was thinking it was harder.

Hey 4K

You calculated the chances together, when really you need to calculate the chances that the SB has a hand first off - and then are only interested in whether the BB has a hand those times the SB does not... since for practical / gameplay purposes it does not matter whether one or both have a hand...

So, using your combos

SB, 60 / 1326 = 4.5% has 88+
we now only care about what the the BB does the 95.5% of the time that the SB folds... so he has 88+ 4.5% of those times... so from a practical standpoint we get to 8.6% or so for the two of them.

Not a big difference, but on SNG profits are made up of these small percentages - oh, and that is not including any effect from card bunching / removal.

Cheers, Mark

I am going to take a little tangent on your question, which I hope you will appreciate. The beauty of a forum is that the answers out of left field sometimes help a lot, and I hope this post does for you.

Poker improvement is - I believe - an accumulation of small advantages, or "poker tools" that you build up over time. A key defining moment of an amateur is when he or she really understands what is happening when the blinds are raised.

Many years ago online I defended my Big Blind with some random hand, hit the flop, and beat out AQs who raised out of the cutoff. The raiser made a sarcastic comment that crystallized (for me) where you really stand, in the Small Blind and the Big Blind, facing a raise by Ax. He said:

"Congratulations on chasing your six outs"

The comment brought home to me the fact that you are, in fact, chasing six outs when you call a raise from someone raising with Ax.

If it is blinds vs blinds ... the rationale changes. First you have to know the player. If the player has exhibited tight behaviour ... you are raising with any two cards. If he is loose and aggressive, it would be smarter to call with big cards and let him hang himself. If you have crap fold it and enhance your table image. If you have not shown a hand or participated in a long time, and have a good table image, raise.

Your post is more to do about determining when to push. Anytime the BB reraises you, it is one of two things: He has a real hand, or he is the kind of player that can make the move of reraising with any hand. I find that the player that can reraise from the BB with nothing is pretty rare, because the raiser usually has a good hand to begin with, but it is fair to say that 88+, sometimes KQs, and Ax (x>J) are going to play back at you from the BB.

For a random hand, say KQo, raised by someone that you put on Ax, the SB has folded, there are 48 cards left in the deck, and you need one of six outs, your chances are 6/48 or 12.5% to make a pair. KQo has the added problem that the "x" in Ax may well be a K or a Q . So if the raise is 3 x BB, you have to pay 2 x BB to win 4.5 x BB. Clearly your odds are poor.

I have seen it over and over ... the blinds in the final part of a tournament getting into a bun fight with hands that normally would be tossed into the garden as fertilizer. Sure it is the final table ... but bad cards in the SB are still bad cards ... lose them.

I find that your "M" (Harrington's measure of your stack divided by the cost of the blinds and antes) dictates your aggressivity in the Blinds, which makes sense because if your M is low, the blinds represent a rare opportunity to accumulate chips.

Since your M dictates your "Blind behavior" , a clear formula is not the solution here. Would be nice to have it though ...

Trapping is much more fun in the Blinds

So keep in mind that if you get played with in the blinds with reraises ... not many players reraise from the BB and most have something. The actual threshold of hands is based mainly on how desperate they are for chips.

Yesterday I won two cheap, 45 player $1.25 rebuy tournaments on FullTiltPoker. In both I got RAISES reraised by the BB a number of times, ... and I folded all of them, ... except one when I was raissing w KK (I beat his TT and took his stack when I reraised him all in .... he should have folded his tens )

So it pays to understand that the blinds are important but you have to know how to let go to survive to the final table. Objectivity will allow you to do this.

Heads up it is a different dynamic outside of this post, but it is a sort of "blind on blind" fight. I trap like there is no tomorrow in cases like that and it is a winning strategy at this albeit low, level. In both the tournaments I played yesterday, I won $109 in each by creating a situation were I can reraise with a better hand.

So it comes down to this, if you are defending, "you are hunting for 6 outs" ... if you call you are gambling, which is ok but you should understand this. If you are attacking the blinds, you should know if the guy or gal in the blinds is a gambler. Don't get too attached to the blinds.

I hope this (long) post was helpful and good luck in your games.

__________________
flintsword

"The lucky player is usually the player that knows how much to leave to chance."

Blog www.myspace.com/flintsword

Great Post Flint

__________________
I'm Not Lucky, I Have Good Karma !

Thanks for the reply Flintsword. i've read a quick skim, but will digest it properly when not at work. looks like great post though.

the main reason for working out %, is because out of the last 22 hands that have been ai (big bets and calls, not due to being <2bb's etc) I have lost 20 of them. Most of these are due to me pushing from the button with blinds at 400 or 600 (statrting stacks 2k) and constantly being called with good calling hands. but then varience is varience and I'm having a better run now.

Thank you ... I tend to drop into this detail mode due to my Poker Blog that I have (surprisingly) been running for three years.

www.myspace.com/flintsword

Have fun! <== love those triangles ... .

__________________
flintsword

"The lucky player is usually the player that knows how much to leave to chance."

Blog www.myspace.com/flintsword

Interesting . Now this is a forum and consequently we are all are looking for poker players to comment to open new doors to your 'poker understanding' ... or sometimes even to kick down some locked doors . I am going to comment on your problem again from left field. Alas ... this feels like another long post, so apologies in advance.

In my experience, limited as it is, whenever I used to use the word "variance" in poker, I was applying the concept incorrectly.

You see, "variance" is a very, very broad mathematical concept that allows peaks and valleys of good and bad cards.

"Life" is also a very broad concept, full of the ups and downs over a long period of time. So when there is a problem, and someone shrugs their shoulders and says "that's life", it does not solve or address the root problem.

This is the point I am making here. I found that I was using the term "variance" to cover a multitude of errors (sins is a good word here) that really had nothing to do with variance.

I want to encourage you not to use the word "variance" for a while. I am quite convinced that the concept of "variance" falls under the category that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing and poker players use it to gloss over a multitude of poker errors instead of digging deeper and solving some root causes.

So ... the fact remains that you are getting called a lot of times. One reason is the type of game or tournament you are playing. In the $1 rebuys (that I play for fun to demonstrate bankroll management to my friends) you can hardly expect people to lay down the BB when raised. The players are generally clueless and for every 100 of your raises, they are going to hit their cards ... well ... a little more than 15 of those times if you count when they fit the board with an OESD, etc.

• The type of tournament you play in affects the call rate out of the blinds. In a $1 rebuy, the blinds tend to call a lot. In a serious tournament ($100+) the skill pool is deeper and you get called for a number of reasons.

Qualify and play in a $322 entry fee tournament and the whole dynamic changes. If you get a reraise you *are* looking at the business end of a poker shotgun. Of course, at this level you also have good players using game theory to raise with sometimes nothing, but do you want to take the chance?

If you want to see EVERY HAND in a $322 entry fee tournament, to see BB behaviours, I did post EVERY HAND of a tournament I won last April (2007) in my personal Poker Blog. I am willing to post either the link or damn ... all seven parts to that tournament in a post. If I put all seven parts of that tournament on this site, I will either get bounced from the forum for flooding or win a glass of champagne for the longest post. (Note: ask GoodKarmaKid when I am back from vacation ). If you want the link I can give it to you but it is LONG, I mean ... holy smokes, I posted every hand with annotations and I usually reserve this Blog entry for people suffering from insomnia. It is the ultimate cure for insomnia! . I digress .... .

• Another non-variance reason for getting a lot of calls out of the BB is how loose you are.

The looser you are, the broader your playing range, and the more logical it is for the BB to call your raise.

Understand that most good poker players tabulate "calling frequency" & "raising frequency" for everyone at their table automatically. You should too .

They know how many times a cycle you are in a hand and how many times you raise. They also keep in mind what you raise with, but that is another subject.

The willingness of players to call your raise when in the BB is determined by your looseness and your aggression. For you to improve your understanding of this qualitative decision-making, you have to clearly understand the inherent difference between "aggression" and "looseness". Instead of telling you this in my own words, there is a recent, excellent article by Justin Bonomo that explains this difference. Here it is:

Loosness and Aggression are NOT the same thing by Justin Bonomo

So you see, there are a lot of of forces at work below the surface affecting the decision to call a raise from a particular player.

My game improved significantly when I stopped chanting the mantra of variance and started looking for real reasons ... then improving my poker to deal with those reasons. .

__________________
flintsword

"The lucky player is usually the player that knows how much to leave to chance."

Blog www.myspace.com/flintsword

wow, another (long!) and great post.
The blinds and blind stealing is a huge topic and as mentioned needs to be played dependant on a variety of factors with you touching on all the key areas, understanding player types, table aggresion, your image, stack sizes, blind size and knowing the odds of your hand holding up etc are all important.
Your post was well written and informative, and will be good to refer back to, however dare I now say it "varience" is somthing that needs to be taken into consideration. Downswings can be hard mentaly and can have a big impact on how you play, so whilst I have never given bad luck and assesing whether it's actually a poker sin enough time and consideration, you have made a very worthy point and reminded me how lazy I am at reviewing my play.

On reviewing the last 22 hands, I got my chips in with the best hand 6 times (55%+ favourite), flipping 6 times (AK v med pair etc)and behind 10 times(oops!), to lose 20 of those times is mathmatically unlikely so over time this will balance out. Whilst all of my pushes held some equity, I guess my point is that varience does exist and has to be factored into how you play and how you maintain your bank roll.

One definate highlight I am taking from this thread is that I need to stop being lazy and spend more time reviewing my poker sessions, to make sure that loses are not in fact big leaks... next query as again I am unsure of this.

What is the best way to review sessions, what are you looking for, how do you identify leaks, and what agenda's do you set to plug them (assuming you have stat software and can review your play easily)

Start by identifying the coin flips as possible bad decisions.

Coin flips put a large percentage of your stack at risk, generally speaking, so the key question here (for me ) is evaluating the player I am thinking of raising all in. Is the player loose or tight? How much 'fold equity do you get with this player? Is your current table image going to make him fold or rush for his chips .

I play throught the entire session and I actually annotate it in my Blog. The process really helps, but few people will read it, though do a good job and you will build a following. More importantly, you get to replay the hand. (Note to GoodKarmaKid: Hand converter to play back tournament and game hand histories would be cool to have on the site) You also see things you did not notice when playing, such as "Man, he sure plays a lot of hands that guy!", "That is the eightth time that weasel has targeted my Blinds, he must think I am too tight in the Blinds", or the classic "Why do I play hands like that!".

I am going on vacation for a few weeks, so no more horrendous long posts (you lucky guy!). Best of luck in your games and when I return in Septemebr I will parachute into the PokerStrategyForum and catch up..

__________________
flintsword

"The lucky player is usually the player that knows how much to leave to chance."

Blog www.myspace.com/flintsword