Question on statistics that may help me become a better Hold 'Em player and prevent me from losing $50 in two days like I did on Thanksgiving

my advice: play blackjack.

My advice too. Obviously you'll still lose, but it's much easier to learn when you should stick and when you should draw.

I don't know this game at all, so can't begin on most, but your chance of getting a particular card each time is 1 in however many cards there are unknown to you; so your chance of not getting it is that multiplied up each time.

So say you can see 10 cards, none of which is the ace of spades, your chance of not getting the ace of spades next card are 41 in 42. Cibe that and you have your odds of not getting it at all. 68921 out of 74088. That's about a 7% chance of getting your card.

Cibe = nCr or nPr?

well yeah it matters where you sit as the probabilities change with each card taken out of the deck....or so I believe that's what you mean.

Cibe=cube, sorry.

i'm fairly shit at poker,but i reckon paying more attention to things like being able to bluff,knowing when to call/raise/check raise,etc,might be an idea...
basic pot odds are based on determining if theres enough in the pot for it to be worth the risk of calling
for example,if you have say a one in four chance to get a card that you reckon will give you the best hand,its only worth calling a tenner bet if there's at least forty euro(or whatever) in the pot...

i do pretty well just honing the intuitive side -- but reducing things to simpler but still sorta ballpark calculations helps too. like say you know you have 5678 and know you need a 9 or 4 to get a straight, then you know that you have a slightly better than 2/13 chance of getting one. now if you look at your opponents showing cards and see no nines or fours it goes up slightly -- if you see even one it begins to go down rapidly. so think about what things have the *most* effect on odds and start with them.

also you only need to look at the situation that you see when you bet -- i.e. if you're waiting for two cards to be dealt, the odds won't be different if they're dealt to another player first, then you (they will change *as the cards are being dealt* but that doesn't affect your betting prior).

but this is all for seven card stud which is my fav. game.

for hold 'em i think its much simpler, coz everyone gets their hole cards first and you just care about the communal cards. furthermore, the odds change the same for everyone as each card is dealt, at least as far as yr. concerned. so pretty much you're just betting on the goodness of your hand and its chances of getting *rilly* good as compared to hypothetical hands. also since you don't know yr. opponents hands you can treat them as part of the "deck" so all your odds are gonna be out of (50-communal cards showing).

like robin sez though the trick, especially when the odds are this basic, is gonna all be in reading your opponents and knowing their "tells" and knowing their betting patterns and also making sure you limit your tells and keep your betting patterns off balance.

good casual disinterested patter and a sharp eye for what your opponents are doing physically (shifty? excited? checking cards often? muttering? rocking? pensive looking? scratching nose?) works wonders.

oh yeah and straights and flushes in general are easy to guesstimate sorta like i said above.

you need one heart to complete a flush -- roughly a bit less than one in four odds, for example, and each other showing heart decreases the chances a bit more and each other showing *any other card* increases the chances an even more marginal bit more (roughly one third of the amount a heart decreases them).

think in terms of cancelling differnet bits of the odds out against one another.

also make sure you know the odds yr calculating are the right ones. like say you have one heart, and all three in the common pool are hearts. so you have a bit less than 1/4 + 1/4 = 1/2 chance of getting a flush.

but yr opponents have a roughly 1/2 chance of getting a flush if you do (i.e. a 1/2 chance that one of their two cards is ALSO a heart) and also a roughly 1/16 (= 1/4 * 1/4) chance of already HAVING a flush (i.e. that BOTH their cards are hearts).

depending on how many opponents you have these odds get worse for you. like if you have four opponents then in total someone else is gonna have a flush if you do more often than not (4/1 odds) which means you should *really* be concerned about having a high heart still.

etc.

HAHAHAHAH I SO knew this was a Leee post!

1. No, where you sit won't affect the odds of getting any hand (it will affect how successful you'll be, and how you should play, but that's a different question altogether).

2. I'm not sure I understand you here - are you simply saying that the more players in the pot means there's a greater chance that one of them improves instead of you?

3. Yeah, kinda. A book might help, or a web page.

4. I'm not sure what you mean by (51-2p) cards left. Pre-flop, the odds of one specific card (like the Ace of Spades, the Ace of Spades) coming in the 5 community cards will be 1-((49/50)*(48/49)*(47/48)*(46/47)*(45/46)), assuming that it's not already in your hand, obviously.

Hope that helps.

Some of my friends have been trying to teach me how to play Hold 'Em. It must be working, because I could actually understand the question in this thread!

(I am still useless at it, though. They, on the other hand, usually make enough money playing it online to cover their rent, if not become pro)

In light of last night, let this thread serve as a reminder that I HAVE QUIT FOR LIFE.

how much did you lose?
it takes a while to get the hang of alright,i'm still fairly shit at poker...

$40, maybe a bit more. At least it took 9 hours to do, so that my hourly rate wasn't so bad.