Any poker player must understand the hand strengths, or the likelihood of getting certain types of hands in certain situations. Poker hand strengths can be compared to the likelihood of getting an attack or defense in a military battle. Freerolls, in particular, require a constant flow of new situational concepts and insight in order to conquer the game.
In poker, the meanings of hand strengths are much simpler than in most card games. It’s really not much more complicated than that. Unlike other card games, pokers are chiefly a battle of probabilities. The hand you hold is never exactly the hand you would wish for. To determine the strength of your hand, you must assign a value to each hand such as high, pair, combinations, etc. All values are related to the power of the hand, and nothing else.
The most important way to view poker hand strengths, is in the context of the battle in front of you. When you look at the options of your hand, you should weigh your possibilities of having the best hand against the hands of your opponents. If you have a strong hand, the battle is likely to be one of the easier ones you can face. Easier still, if you have the best hand and your expectations are high, the battle may be one of the most profitable.
But, having said that, you also need to know what the chances are for your hand, and your opponents’ chances, in order to make sound tactical decisions. When you learn the odds of winning, and the stakes of each hand, you will be able to make sound economic decisions in terms of your poker hand.
The best poker hand strengths are a result of Understanding Value, or looking at the pot odds, relative to your hand strength. If you have a probability rate of winning a hand of say 8% compared to 5% – you have a 5 to 1 advantage. Pot odds can not be automatically calculated, they must be considered in relationship to your hand odds. When you learn to do this, you will be able to make balanced economic decisions in terms of your poker hand odds.
However, poker hand odds need to be calculated in relationship to your hand strength. As I said earlier, an A-A hand is stronger than a K-K hand, but stronger than many other hands. Why? Because it has the higher cards – Ace and King – compared to other pairs. Therefore, if you are playing a game where the cards you hold are strong, you will want to bet the most. Bet with the strongest hand.
As a good rule of thumb, poker hand odds can be “something for nothing” in some cases. Examine your hand carefully, and if you are losing for example, you should consider that you are betting with something weaker than you should be. You are probably losing money, and this should be charging you 1 or 2 betting rounds for the privilege of winning the pot. If you are winning, the poker hand odds you are winning are worth more than your Expected Value (EV) or you are playing perfectly. Value is defined as the average of the get together match’s EV and the poker hand odds given.
EV can be calculated by two methods, constant (ball into a wheel) and pieces-mixed (ball into a mixture). The first, more precisely, is the expected frequency of winning. This frequency is given by the probability of winning given the probability of getting the cards. It is Uncertainty, that is, it is a risk that the calculation of the frequency of winning will give a result different from the one expected if you calculate it using the formula above. Let’s look at the probability of getting a pocket pair of aces as a example. The probability of getting this pair as the first card on the flop is about 4/27, or about 1.75 %. The expected frequency of this event is about 13 % in a general situation.
The situation is complicated by the fact that aces are multifold cards, so the number of unknown cards is also the probability of winning, which in turn is a factor in the expected frequency of the event. We also know that the event is so infrequent, that the donkey will not see it every time. Thus, in welvery the expected frequency of the event, the chance of losing is greater than the chance of winning. But, the greater the number of strained opportunities the greater the chance of losing, so that the donkey is not said to be quite close to a win.
To get a handle on the subject, one needs to conceptualize the relationship between the amount of money one expects to win and the amount of money one needs to bet in order to win, and the amount of money one actually wins.