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Varuna666 · High Card Joined: 17 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

Hi@all

I stumbled over a very interesting dilemma while I am preparing to move up the stakes currently at Mid-Stake Limit Holdem, which Iead me to create a calculator to see how much I have to steal in order to stay alive:

I checked the postive EV Chart from Pokerroom.com
I assumed that for a pretty loose game in a full ring game at least 4 people will see the showdown. I imported this in Excel and averaged the positive EV on every position for all starting hands. 50 starting hands have a positive EV, even if it is as small as 0.01 or as large as 2.00 for AA. As you know or maybe not, the positive EV is as unit always given as average profit in Big Bets.

To follow this thread please download this excel-sheet:

http://www.pokerhound.de/Must_Steal_Calculator.xls

If you are not sure wheather this sheet contains a threat to your computer, please scan it online with a malware/virus scanner. i.e. http://virusscan.jotti.org/

Back to the thread:
Let's take 100.000 hands: we have 3 distinctive groups of starting hands: pocket pairs, suited cards and unsuited cards.
We will get a specific pocket pair with odds of 220:1, a specific suited card with odds of 331:1 and any specific unsuited card with odds of 110:1

For 100.000 hands we will get dealt each specific pocket pair arround 454 times (i.e. AA), each specific suited starting hand arround 302 times (i.e. AKs) and each specific unsuited starting hand arround 909 times (i.e. AQo).

Now we will multiply each of the specific starting hands +EV value with the number of times they are dealt
(i.e. for AA = 2.00EV x 454 occurrencies x 30$ as dollar unit of Big Bets) = 27240$

...and will sum these values up. We will receive in Dollars:

$105,340.91 for our playable pocket pairs
$48, 240.18 for our playable suited hands and
$56,522.73 for our playable non-suited hands

Which startings hands belong to this 50 please refer to the Excel-sheet
We can receive therefore $210,103.82

Here comes the Problem: we have to pay for 100,000 hands on a long hand ring table, say 9 players, 100,000/9* SB+BB per round, say 15$+10$ within a 15$-30$ Limit Game,
which costs us therefore $277,777.78 to play 100,000 hands.

We therefore have a loss of -$67,673.96 that transfers into an hourly loss of -67.67, assuming we play an average of 100 hands per hour.

This hourly loss transfers into round-costs per hour equal to 2.7, assuming the blind costs per round are 10$-15$ for SB & BB distinctively as we are playing a 15$-30$ Limit game.

That tells us that we will HAVE TO TRY TO STEAL every 2.7 rounds both blinds or equally every 37 hands.

Equally, this can be played as a SB vs. BB situation where we will HAVE TO TRY TO STEAL every 2.46 rounds.

To make this post round, I made an interactive Excel-Sheet which you guys & girls can download and then play around it. Please only change the fields in green color, otherwise you will mess up the sheet.

Hope you like it, it is an excellent tool, because the amount of rounds or hands after I will have to steal in order to stay alive will change dynamically with the parameters

1. Hands per hour
2. Players per table
3. SB + BB

Where as 1. & 2. seems to be obvious, 3. might be forgotten easily, but makes it somewhat even more interesting to play with:

Parameters:
Amount of Hands played: 100000
Hands p/h: 100
Players per Table: 9

In a 2$-4$ Limit Game we have
SB: 1$
BB: 2$

MUST STEAL EVERY X ROUNDS SB vs. BB:
4.18

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS EVERY X Hands:
56.40

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS per X ROUNDS:
6.27

Opposed to this in a different ratiowise Blind-Structure
In a 15$-30$ Limit Game we have
Amount of Hands played: 100000
Hands p/h: 100
Players per Table: 9
SB: 10$
BB: 15$

MUST STEAL EVERY X ROUNDS SB vs. BB:
2.46

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS EVERY X Hands:
36.94

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS per X ROUNDS:
4.10

Oh, and to to answer the question why I choose a loose game where the +EV is based on 4 players, the answer is simple: the +EV is actually less in games where less players play or see the river as opposed to more people playing and staying in a hand, which not only common sense dictiates as Izmet Fekali and Abdul Jalib haven argued and proven countless times already (more money to win from players that should have never been in the hand in the first place, keyword greedy-big-pot-thoery), but those who would actually look at a +EV chart of only 2 players playing and seeing the showdown you would see that AA has only a +EV between 1.13 & 1.16 (the +EV Chart from pokerroom.com only counts hands with +EV as average profit in Big Bets, when there is a showdown for those that do not know how the data is constructed!) as opposed to the +EV of 10 Players playing and seeing a showdown, where the +EV ranges between 2.48 & 2.96 depending what position the player has. But let's not get stuck with this, the fact is that the more players there are on a table, the higher the +EV for the specific qualifying hands, the less players there are on a table, the less +EV is available and the higher the stealing rate will have to be, which we can see if we look at numbers for a shorthand game with 6 players:

Parameters:
15$-30$ Limit Game
Amount of Hands played: 100000
Hands p/h: 100
Players per Table: 6
SB: 10$
BB: 15$

RESULT w/o STEAL in $ per 100,000 hands: -206,562.85
Loss Rate in $/h: -206.56
Loss Rate in Rounds-Cost /h (SB+BB): 8.3

MUST STEAL EVERY X ROUNDS SB vs. BB:
1.21

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS EVERY X Hands:
12.10

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS per X ROUNDS:
2.02

Compare this to the same game parameters, only 9 players as above:

9-handed game:
MUST STEAL EVERY X ROUNDS SB vs. BB:
2.46

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS EVERY X Hands:
36.94

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS per X ROUNDS:
4.10

6-handed game:
MUST STEAL EVERY X ROUNDS SB vs. BB:
1.21

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS EVERY X Hands:
12.10

OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS per X ROUNDS:
2.02

Again:
9-handed game:
STEAL BOTH BLINDS EVERY X Hands:
36.94

6-handed game:
OR STEAL BOTH BLINDS EVERY X Hands:
12.10

I hope you like this post and the Excel-Sheet I have provided for a download.

Good luck with the cards and let's hope we all can use this knowledge for something constructive:idea:

See you @the tables...

live4freerolls · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 2:11 pm Post subject:

Fixed Limit + Stealing = Does not compute ?

Varuna666 · High Card Joined: 17 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

LostOstrich · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 2:42 pm Post subject:

I don't understand LHE, but this appears pretty well thought out.

OP clearly voted Yes to his own poll though.

JazzOne · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 2:45 pm Post subject:

I'm too scared to download this. Looks like spam to me. Sorry.

Varuna666 · High Card Joined: 17 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

live4freerolls

fire_eyes_2k

Varuna666 · High Card Joined: 17 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

[quote="live4freerolls"][quote="Varuna666"]

mathman1115 · Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 9:49 pm Post subject:

I do believe that live4freerolls is incorrect in saying that stealing is less important in limit than in NL. But to the original poster, i don't understand why you are making such a defensive post in response.

Varuna666 · High Card Joined: 17 Aug 2008 Posts: 5

Cattivo · Straight Joined: 23 Jul 2007 Posts: 120 Location: Chicago

Read some Barry Tannenbaum, he explains pretty well why blind stealing is so necessary. In the higher limits where the goal is to make 1 BB per hour, the occasional blind steal can mean the difference between a profitable player and a losing player.

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