Counting cards?

Hello all. Newbie here. Been reading the site for a few weeks, and I love it. Hopefully my first question is better than a typical newbie question.

I was wondering if any of you can get a better idea of what cards will come up on the board judging by how many people are in the hand and how many have folded. Is this even worth trying to attempt, or is it a waste of time?

I guess I got the idea last night after watching Hellmuth for a few hours at UB. It seemed like he just knew what cards would come up on the turn and river sometimes. He stayed in a lot of hands with bad pot odds. And of course he raised a lot with bad pot odds.

Any input is appreciated.

These guys play at a different level altogether. You shouldn't worry about it too much now. First you need to master the basic odds etc. So just play by the pot odds now.

And to answer your question, the likelyhood someone has a good hand is simply smaller when there are 6 people than when there are 10 people. And if 5 have folded before you, your hand becomes "better" because you simply need to have the better hand out of 4 more people, instead of the best hand out of 9 more people if you were first up to act (UTG=under the gun). That's the general idea.

But do not confuse this with against-the-pot-odds raises etc you see on TV. There are different reasons why they do this. And eh, they don't know what cards are gonna show up.. they really have the same odds to get their "good card" as everyone else.

Counting cards is impossible in poker because unlike blackjack each hand is an independant event. The cards get shuffled between each hand, in blackjack they don't.

Oh yeah and Hellmuth is a fish, just ask ilikeaces86 or Bmxicle. They know...

Its a waste of time. You cant put people on specific hands so the whole thing is pretty meaningless. In multiway pots people are quite likely to be limping hands like A:spade:2:spade: or 5:club:6:club: or maybe even K:heart:Queen:heart: Thats far too big a range to help you with guessing the probability to hit your 77, since you have no idea if anyone has a 7. Similarly if someone raises the could have AA, or QQ, or JJ, or AQ, or KQ, or TT etc. etc. etc. What is the chance you will hit your AK. Who the hell knows? They could have AK, making it pretty unlikely, or they could have TT making it pretty likely, or they could have AQ which makes it pretty unlikely but is actually the situation you want to be in since they will pay you off most.

Just worry about putting people on hand ranges (like a PFR mught have AA-KK, AK-AQ or something) and concentrate on trying to be ahead of those ranges when you arent folding.

The preflop action has very little effect on drawing odds. This is because many hands that contain high cards are total junk, like K3o, while many hands with low cards, like 44 are playable in many situations. In my opinion, the only time preflop action should be considered with respect to drawing odds is when you are at a very tight table in late position and see a lot of people in the pot. Now it is very likely that a lot of high cards are out there, and you can consider folding a hand like AQ or AK as you are probably drawing to half or less of the outs you would normally expect.

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Originally Posted by Irisheyes

Oh yeah and Hellmuth is a fish, just ask ilikeaces86 or Bmxicle. They know...

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I was just about to post that, but really, its true. I wouldnt base much on his cash game play, his tourney play is another story though.

I shouldn't have titled the post Counting Cards, since that's not really what I meant. I figured no one could tell exactly what cards would come up on the board, but I was just wondering if there may be a little edge to be found there. It makes sense that the range is too big, and you would have to be able to precisely put people on certain hands for the idea to work, which is impossible.

Thanks for the responses everyone.