Figuring out equity in your head, during a hand, w/out PokerStove (newbie question)

Your equity is determined by how many hands you beat, how often you hold, how many hands we lose too, and how often we catch up.

Its 2 handed on the same K83r flop. We hold AK and shove the flop. Villain calls with exactly KQ, 88, and 33. What is our equity against that range? WHY???? Ignore fold equity.

Originally Posted by JKDS

Your equity is determined by how many hands you beat, how often you hold, how many hands we lose too, and how often we catch up.

Its 2 handed on the same K83r flop. We hold AK and shove the flop. Villain calls with exactly KQ, 88, and 33. What is our equity against that range? WHY???? Ignore fold equity.

This is a great example. If you can put your opps on a solid range, you can figure out where each hand lies in relation to your own holding.

In this example:
KQ: 8 combos that you beat
33+88: 6 combos that beat you

So, 8/(8+6) = 57% equity. It's approximate (the actual stove result is an even 50% due to the fact that the sets crush you more than you crush the KQ), but it's also doable at the table when you get good at estimating combos.

I know we don't have enough info but why are giving villain such a narrow range. @ 2nl (don't know ops stakes) QQ, JJ, is almost always continuing and TT, 99, AQ, AJ, are gonna stick around enough to exploit them too.

But I think ops original question is being over looked. JKDS gave a great explanation of what equity is but how do we do that on the fly? I still think that practice with a tool like pokerstove is the best way to get comfortable with understanding our equity vs any given range. No?

Originally Posted by supahaole

I know we don't have enough info but why are giving villain such a narrow range. @ 2nl (don't know ops stakes) QQ, JJ, is almost always continuing and TT, 99, AQ, AJ, are gonna stick around enough to exploit them too.

But I think ops original question is being over looked. JKDS gave a great explanation of what equity is but how do we do that on the fly? I still think that practice with a tool like pokerstove is the best way to get comfortable with understanding our equity vs any given range. No?

Obv i dont think thats actually anyones continuing range, but its a good exercise for figuring out our equity. Ya, pokerstoving things alot will get u a good feel...but only if you really understand why pokerstove says what it says. If you do understand, and you know your equity against every possible hand, then you can easily determine what your equity is without needing pokerstove if you really wanted to. Honestly, i dont really ever care what my equity is...and i rather just know that im beating so and so in villains range and behind so and so and hes folding so and so and raising so and so etc.

@nightgizmo: yup thats exactly why. KQ will suck out about 12% of the time, and we'll almost never improve against 33 or 88. So really its 8*88% : 6+8*12% which is about 50%:50%

Sorry for the delayed response, guys.

Originally Posted by JKDS

Its 2 handed on the same K83r flop. We hold AK and shove the flop. Villain calls with exactly KQ, 88, and 33. What is our equity against that range? WHY???? Ignore fold equity.

Are you just asking a hypothetical here? Because realistically I'd put someone one AA, KK, AK (two of which crush me) before I'd put someone on 88 or 33.

Originally Posted by Imthenewfish

I still don't see how you got 70% without telling us the villains' ranges

This 70% from Stove assume 3 opponents play any random cards to the showdown -- which I do realize is what's going to happen very often. I put in random bc I was using a theoretical scenario where I have no reads on the villains and assume I could be up against anything. Remember, I was asking a hypothetical mathy question rather than one where you're reading players, etc.

Originally Posted by JKDS

@nightgizmo: yup thats exactly why. KQ will suck out about 12% of the time, and we'll almost never improve against 33 or 88. So really its 8*88% : 6+8*12% which is about 50%:50%

Uuug. Brain meltdown. So confused about this one. It's ok, you don't need to explain. Just realizing I need to work on this sort of thing.

Originally Posted by supahaole

But I think ops original question is being over looked. JKDS gave a great explanation of what equity is but how do we do that on the fly? I still think that practice with a tool like pokerstove is the best way to get comfortable with understanding our equity vs any given range. No?

That's right. In this thread I just kinda wanted to know what kind of calculations you do during the hand. Well I guess I wasn't sure if coming up with a raw # that reflects the probability of my hand winning was useful to know as a kind of, I dunno, basis for determining how to proceed in that hand. I was wondering if the thought process (in real time at the table) would be, like...

"Ok, I know that TPTK on a dry board vs 3 opponents is about ~70% ... and I know one of the villains has an average range and two of them are super nits ... so my equity is really got to be less than 70% ... probably more like 60% maybe ... I can't be sure (since I don't have PokerStove embedded in my brain) but it's definitely less ... so now if I bet, two will probably call, which give means my implied odds are ..." Well you get the idea.

Basically, I'm just wondering about how the thought process works as you play a hand, and whether you start w/ a raw math-based equity %, then work through the strategy stuff after that.

JKDS was just creating a hypothetical situation, purely as an exercise to teach a concept. His example shows what you can actually do at the table.

Also -- please erase from your memory the erroneous thought that "TPTK has 70% equity vs 3 opponents". You will never use that in any at-the-table calculation ever.

Instead, you will use the same process you always use: figure out a range and then calculate equity. The only difference is that at the table, you use mental shortcuts to estimate your equity.

I know the next question: "What shortcuts?" Well, it depends. It depends on what works for you as a shortcut. For some people, they can quickly juggle a bunch of different numbers in their head and spit out an answer. For others, they can mentally sort the different hands in a range by strength, and then combine them to get an estimate of strength ("he has 8 dominated pairs and 6 sets, those end up canceling each other out to break even"). Maybe you just plug values into PokerStove, but before you ever hit the "Evaluate" button, you try to get your own estimate and see how close you get, then eventually just get good at intuitively knowing the equity.

Bottom line: whatever works for you, use it. It's one of those things that doesn't have a single, one-size-fits-all solution, because what works for some people will seem impossible to others that can still get the same results using different methods.

Originally Posted by rowhousepd

This 70% from Stove assume 3 opponents play any random cards to the showdown -- which I do realize is what's going to happen very often. I put in random bc I was using a theoretical scenario where I have no reads on the villains and assume I could be up against anything. Remember, I was asking a hypothetical mathy question rather than one where you're reading players, etc.

OMGWTFBBQ

There is so much wrong with this I don't know where to begin.

"70% assumes 3 opponents play any random to showdown and that's whats going to happen very often". Seriously? Do you think this is true?

Clearly you are not getting the point here. Using stove to figure out equity implicitly means we must put our opponents on ranges. Putting opponents on ranges is not necessarily based on 'having reads' on them. Seriously, you are going about this all wrong. The worst part about it is you're justifing it and trying to convince others what you're doing is correct.

Let me give you an example of a situation where I would use a random range to figure out my equity. Preflop, I`m a shortstack in a tournament in the small blind and will have to shovel my chips in regardess of what I hold once the action makes it`s way to me (assume I have like 1.5 BBs left).

Assume first that the action folds all the way around to me; I get my chips in, and the BB is now forced to call since my stack is so short and all the dead money in the pot.

Here we can assign a truly random range to our villain, because we know he`s calling even if he looks down at 72o (which, even if I held AKo, isnt that big a dog).
`
So we can see now that valuing our hand versus random ranges is fairly useless as it only really applies to few and infrequent situations.

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To get back to your example, you stated that stove told you that you had a 70% equity share of the pot while your three opponents had 10% each. But what happened preflop?

Let's assume that preflop, you failed to raise and instead decided to limp along with each of these players. So what cards are they limping with? AA? KK? no, probably not. But hands like 22-88, QTo, JTo might be in that range.

It's pretty obvious that even limping preflop involves some kind of hand selection. Why then, condemn ourselves to assigning 'random' hand ranges postflop?

First off, typo alert! My bad, sorry guys.

Originally Posted by rowhousepd

This 70% from Stove assume 3 opponents play any random cards to the showdown -- which I do realize is what's going to happen very often

I meant to say: "which I realize is NOT what's going to happen often." Big difference. Think that lead to some confusion. (Promise I'll preview my posts from now on.)

Originally Posted by JKDS

Im pretty stumped on how to quickly respond and change your thinking via a forum post alone.
....
this isnt great thinking.

I do know that. In fact what I mean to illustrate (though it may have come across differently) was one possible way of thinking through the decision making process, starting w/ a pre-memorized equity # specific to that TPTK dry board scenario, then changing that number depending on what kind of range I thought my opponent had.

Originally Posted by NightGizmo

Also -- please erase from your memory the erroneous thought that "TPTK has 70% equity vs 3 opponents". You will never use that in any at-the-table calculation ever.
....
Instead, you will use the same process you always use: figure out a range and then calculate equity. The only difference is that at the table, you use mental shortcuts to estimate your equity.

I'm wiping my mental hard drive clean of the above line of thinking. The advice to figure out range and then equity pretty much gets to the crux of my original question. Mostly I'm trying to figure out which part of the puzzle to begin with.

Originally Posted by Penneywize

"70% assumes 3 opponents play any random to showdown and that's whats going to happen very often". Seriously? Do you think this is true?

Nope, as I said it was typo. I was just trying to imagine theoretical, no-reads situation. Like I mentioned, I've been wondering which comes first in your head as you play a hand -- a calculation of equity (based purely on the scenario), or a guess about the villain's range. Obviously it sounds like figuring out the range precedes the equity estimate. About the other things pointed out, Penneywize, your point is taken. Thanks for the help.

From what most of you guys said, it sounds like if the villain's range contains hands that, for the most part, the hero is a big favorite over, the equity is high. But when his range consists largely of hands that crush the hero, the equity is probably bad. Is this more or less accurate?

Originally Posted by rowhousepd

From what most of you guys said, it sounds like if the villain's range contains hands that, for the most part, the hero is a big favorite over, the equity is high. But when his range consists largely of hands that crush the hero, the equity is probably bad. Is this more or less accurate?

Correct, but emphasis on for the most part because of drawing hands... Have you read Hand Combinations yet? I think this thread in particular will help out with a lot in understanding the responses about combinations.

No, I hadn't read it ... yet. thanks!