How to use poker statistics to improve your Texas Hold Em poker gameThis is the fifth part of a Hold Em Poker article. By using the poker statistics developed so far, a couple of Dopey Dave players added a small basic learned poker skill to improve their pathetic game. No player, in a Texas Hold Em poker game, can do anything that will affect the way cards fall. Once the dealer has shuffled and cut the deck, the best hand on the river is set and only an occasional dealer error can affect the outcome. This does not mean that the best hand on the river predetermines your success or failure at the table. The actions of players can cause a hand to end at any stage due to players folding and conceding the hand to one player. In fact, other than the lowest limit games that are populated by very bad players, most poker hands have ended and a winner declared before the river. Success of a poker player is the amount of money (chips) won or lost over many hands not by the number of hands won or lost. Whether you accumulate or lose chips in the long run is a result of the number of mistakes you make relative to other players. Poker is all about assessing situations based on the information available when it is your turn to act and taking the appropriate action for that situation. In the previous simulations, the players were incapable of assessing any situation and consequently followed each other to the river letting the cards talk to determine the winner. In other words, they relied solely on the luck of the draw. I repeated the simulation after two of the players had changed the way they played after studying the poker statistics developed so far. Firstly, from the poker statistics they added a basic learned skill and folded 38 of the worst two card hand combination's dealt. Here are the hands that the poker statistics indicated had a large negative win expectation, 72Offsuit, 82O, 83O, 92O, 93O, 94O, T2O, T3O, T4O, T5O, J2O, J3O, J4O, J5O, J6O, Q2O, Q3O, Q4O, Q5O, Q6O, Q7O, K2O, K3O, K4O, K5O, K6O, K7O, K8O, 72Suited, 82S, 83S, 92S, 93S, 94S, T2S, T3S, T4S, T5S. These hands still played in either blind. On the other streets, they bet major over cards, draws, and pairs or better. This suggests that 22.5% of the 169 possible two card combination's are folded unless in a blind. This of course is wrong. (See card combo) 28 hole cards will be of the unique unsuited variety and there are twelve of each for 336 hands. There are four each of the 10 unique suited combination's for a total of 40 hands. This means that 376 of the 1326 unique hands dealt or 28.4% are folded before the flop. Note that none of these hands can flop a straight. I put two of the new and improved Dopey (now Smart) Dave players in seats, three and six which were the unluckiest seats in the previous simulation and using the same deal as before re-ran the simulation. Let us compare the results of this and the previous simulation shown side by side below. The win percentage change for each player is too small to show up. Seats 3 and 6, where the two Smart Dave players are sitting, showed a sharp improvement with both seats turning huge losses into large wins. Even the application of a small amount of skill has made a noticeable difference to the poker statistics regarding earnings for all players. Individual hands will still win or lose on the turn of a card and the luck of the draw has not changed. Could it be that the addition of a minimum amount of poker skill by a couple of players has changed the earnings of all players? In part six, we will see what difference to the poker statistics a couple of highly skilled players can make in the same game. Tex Canuck Poker Statistics >> My poker blog
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