Poker Articles

A Bit of Maths:
Small Rebuy Comps
By Paul Samuel
(The UK's answer to Mike Caro or Lassie)

1. Introduction

I was playing in the £20 rebuy pot limit hold'em at Luton last night when surprise, surprise, I came across a player who was persistently raising with all sorts of rubbish.

Re-Raising with KJ was normal!

I mused!

Could I, by estimating the percentage of his raised hands, calculate his likely hand given a raise on his part?

This is really interesting!

But first, the previous conundrum

2. Answer Conundrum

Remember:-
"A few years ago in a festival a living legend from Luton 'NT' won 5 one hand satellites in sequence with a buy-in of 5500 Gilders! He was banned from playing any more, but my question is, given that each satellite had 9 players what were the odds of this achievement?"

First, I got bit wrong...I spoke to NT and it was five 10 man one hand satellites in sequence, the odds thus being:

1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 x 1/10 = 1/100,000 or 99,999 to 1!

Simple anyway!

Now the article :-

3. Scoring a Loose Player

Lets begin by roughly ranking starting hands :-

Table 1 - Hand Rankings

Now let us suppose that integrated into any players subconscious hand ranking is a minimum raising rank. So for example referring to the above table, a very, very tight player might only raised with 'rank 1' hands or AA, KK, AK!

Now we can count each class of hand to produce an extended table :-

Table 2 - Counted & Ranked Hands

Another example would be a 'Class 3' player (like me) who raises with JJ, TT, 99, AJ, QQ, AQ, AA, KK, AK!

Look don't get picky...This is a rough guide.

Now we can produce a further table thus :-

Table 3 - Player Classes

Now to hearken back to my example...

The wild man on my table (during the rebuy phase at least) was raising at least 25% of the time which reading across in the above table puts him as a class 8 player.

When this player raises put him typically on a KQ or better or as low as a JT!

Re-raise him with any ace to give yourself a 'shot' at doubling through. Maybe even a Qx is worth a swing.

You need to accumulate chips in the rebuy stage. Know when and who to gamble with!

The above theory is another example of turning instinct into Maths.

Incidentally, I went out 6th when my A K was cracked by an AJ! The wild man came nowhere!