Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
Bump. Someone e-mailed me asking the following:

I read the article above and have a few questions. I understand the math. I did your exercises for hand combinations and was able to calculate all of the exercises correctly. I am not quite sure how to use this in my online game. With Poker Stove I can enter the range and run the situation. Doesn't that run using combinatorics? If so, is there really a reason to do it by hand? Or is all of this kind of just to know how the program is spitting out numbers? I'm sorry if this email is sloppy - long day and should get some sleep, but I wanted to send this because this question has really been bugging me. Thank you so much for your time!

My reply was:

PokerStove does deal with the combinatorics, so you're good there, and calculating equity by hand is kind of pointless. But part of the point of understanding this stuff is to be able to have an idea with how an opponent's range is weighted. For example, suppose you've got AK on a board of AKQ33 and your opponent's range for whatever reason is {AQ+, QQ+}. That's 1 combo of AA, 1 combo of KK, 3 combos of QQ, 4 combos of AK, and 6 combos of AQ, so we beat 6, lose to 5, and tie with 4, putting us slightly ahead. Someone who didn't understand this at all would just say we beat 1 hand (AQ), tie 1 hand (AK), and lose to 3 hands (AA, KK, QQ), giving them the idea that we're way behind here.

Just thought that might be useful to someone.
BUMP

I've read through this thread many times as is evident by a reply a few years back. I was reading through it again and was really glad I had when I came upon this addition!