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Best Strategy for WPT All-in Hold'em Casino Game

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Timothy Liu

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May 24, 2004, 4:11:25 AM5/24/04
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Someone else posted a piece of news on the new house game called WPT
All-in Hold'em. After some number crunching, here is the best strategy
and EV.

http://tim.liu.home.comcast.net/poker

Bottom line is: if perfect strategy is played, the house edge is about
1.5%.

The strategy has some fascinating perculiarities: require you to bet 10x for the
highest and lowest hand. It revealed something about Hold'em I am sure
some expert players can relate to. If you can lock opponent on high
cards, low cards plays better than medium cards.

Tim

Iceman

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May 24, 2004, 6:42:32 AM5/24/04
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On 24 May 2004 01:11:25 -0700, flame_bait...@yahoo.com
(Timothy Liu) wrote:

>Someone else posted a piece of news on the new house game called WPT
>All-in Hold'em. After some number crunching, here is the best strategy
>and EV.
>
>http://tim.liu.home.comcast.net/poker
>
>Bottom line is: if perfect strategy is played, the house edge is about
>1.5%.

Thanks. I suspect in real life most players would do much worse than
that, since they would fold a lot more hands than just the very worst,
not bet 10x with low flush/straight cards, and instead bet 10x with a
lot of seemingly strong high card hands that do better with 5x.

>The strategy has some fascinating perculiarities: require you to bet 10x for the
>highest and lowest hand.

I thought about this...the reason betting 10x makes sense with low
flush/straight cards is that:

-the dealer will fold a large fraction of the hands he holds, and
those extra antes make a big difference
-when you do get called you're rarely in terrible shape (40-45%
against overcards)

Low unconnected cards don't win enough on the extra antes you pick up
by betting 10x to make up for their greater disadvantage relative to
higher hands - the few extra percent of a straight or flush draw makes
the difference here.

> It revealed something about Hold'em I am sure
>some expert players can relate to. If you can lock opponent on high
>cards, low cards plays better than medium cards.

I disagree. Low cards do poorly against the 13+ or 17+ range of
hands, but the difference is that they lose less against the 17+
because the dealer folds a lot more often. Medium cards do okay
against the 13+ range, but poorly against the 17+ range; unlike low
cards you'd rather the dealer play the 13-16 hands, many of which you
dominate. Hands with one high card and one low/medium card also want
to face the 13-16 range.

ContactGSW

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May 24, 2004, 10:05:46 AM5/24/04
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Thanks for the work Tim, if it ever makes it to Tunica, I'll donate to the
cause (your cause, at 1.5% Its a pretty good chance I'll donate to the
casino's cause too)
ContactGSW

_________________________________________________________________
Posted using RecPoker.com - http://www.recpoker.com


salmoneous

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May 24, 2004, 3:27:50 PM5/24/04
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Is the game played with more than one player at a time? If so, I would
imagine that just a bit of knowledge of the other dealt cards would be
able to get that 1.5% advantage down.

J. Michael Hammond

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May 26, 2004, 9:25:32 AM5/26/04
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flame_bait...@yahoo.com (Timothy Liu) wrote in message news:<fcb62ad8.0405...@posting.google.com>...

I shoved your numbers into a spreadsheet and got a house advantage of
1.65%.
Do you think the difference is due to me mis-transcribing or
mis-computing something, or due to the numbers being published to two
decimal places, or did you round off the summary number somehow?

Thanks!
--JMike

Ron Legere

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May 26, 2004, 11:21:39 AM5/26/04
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Tim,
Thanks for posting the strategy. As I posted earlier, i also analyzed
this game (monte carlo) and got the same strategy you did (within margin
of error) , and the same
house edge. So, unless we both screwed up the same way, I can now
beleive the strategy a bit more :)

Anyway, you are correct about the 'practical' house edge. If you
played this like you were playing real holdem, you would fold a lot more
hands
and the house edge shoots way up!!

Cheers!

Timothy Liu

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May 26, 2004, 7:02:24 PM5/26/04
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It is the round off error. It is exported from excel spreadsheet which
is set to display 2 decimal places. If you want it I can email it to
you. My email is in the web site.

jm...@alum.mit.edu (J. Michael Hammond) wrote in message news:<f9290115.04052...@posting.google.com>...

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