My contribution to FTR - Beginner's Handbook

[jayknabl]

Hey y'all. I know I'm a new member here, and I'm far from an authority on poker, but I feel I owe something to this forum. And now for it...

Ever since I started playing, I wished somebody would just give me an easy to follow guide as to the general guidelines of playing poker. Meaning, a guide of what hands to play, with theoretical expectation, and a guide to pot odds, all in one easy-to-read place. I've found charts, but none of them seemed to me to be very complete or easy to figure out.

So, I went ahead and made one. I ran simulations on Poker Academy 2's simulation program, 500,000 rounds per hand, for every possible hand a player could recieve. The first chart shows the percentage of times those hands will win according to the results of the simulation. The percentages correspond to the concept of +EV as well, hands that win more than 13.3 percent of the time have a +EV. Included is a chart of these grouped by pocket pairs, suited connectors, and Sklansky/Malmuth groups, for convenience.

The second chart is your every day pot odds chart. Shows your odds from flop-to-turn, and seperately your odds from turn-to-river. So, beginners, novices, and players of all kinds...

...If you refer to the hand win % chart pre-flop, and follow the pot odds guidelines post-flop, there's absolutely no reason why you can't become a winning long-term poker player. Enjoy!

P.S. this is a Microsoft Excel document.

http://www.scenepress.com/pokerhandbook.xls

[cobere]

The percentages correspond to the concept of +EV as well, hands that win more than 13.3 percent of the time have a +EV.

Can you elaborate on this a bit? How do you equate 13.3% to +EV?

[jayknabl]

Honestly I couldn't do it for you statistically, but I compared a chart that listed the +EV of a hands based on a simulation, and compared the numbers to the percentages I found in my simulations. Generally, the hands on the chart that were found to generally have a +EV through the simulation corresponded to the hands in my simulation that had a %Win rate of 13.4 or more.

[martindcx1e]

hand charts don't really help too much to improve your game. pot odds are good to know, but the whole hand chart/win % thing doesn't really help at all imo.

[jayknabl]

IMO following a hand chart can REALLY get a beginning player used to running a tight, but most of all efficient ship.

Not only does referring to the chart for every hand get a player used to being in an analytical state of mind while playing, it's a good guideline for that newbie who might just be thinking of playing 7-Ao.

Obviously some situations depend on a player's reads, or gut feelings about his opponent's move, but having a good, solid framework to go on can never hurt.

Anyways, I find it to be extremely useful having these printouts at my disposal- that's why I made em. If you find they will help your game, use them too!

[salsa4ever]

don't play AJo in MP because it has a xxx.xx +EV

play it because you know why you wanna play it and what you wanna do with it. otherwise even if it's +EV for me, if won't be for you

[martindcx1e]

just play tighter in earlier position, raise more in later position, and usually always stay away from offsuit uncoordinated hands.