- The most usual kind of poker is “high poker” where aces are always high, except the ace can optionally be low for the purpose of making a straight (that is, A-2-3-4-5 is a straight, and so is 10-J-Q-K-A).
- The crossword clue 'Ace, in poker' published 1 time⁄s and has 1 unique answer⁄s on our system. Times Daily' answers for TODAY!
- Playing poker with fewer than 52 cards is not a new idea. In the first half of the 19th century, the earliest form of poker was played with just 20 cards - the ace, king, queen, jack and ten of each suit - with five cards dealt to each of four players.
It makes no difference whether someone has the ace of clubs or the ace of diamonds. If remaining players have exactly the same hand at showdown, only in different suits, the pot is split. The value of poker hands is determined by how rare or common it is to be dealt them, with the most common hands valued lower than the rarer hands.
When is it worth it to chase the big bonanza?
How far do we go in our Ace chase? It varies from game to game
In any video poker game, the “expert” strategy changes with the pay table.
Do flushes pay 5-for-1, 6-for-1 or 7-for-1? Puzzle games.
Do you get 2-for-1 on two pair, or 1-for-1, with enhancements elsewhere on the pay table?
But when the player settles on games such as Double Double Bonus Poker or Super Aces, at least part of our focus has to be on the top of the deck. What happens in Double Double Bonus, when four Aces pay 800 coins for a five-coin bet, or 2,000 if the Aces are accompanied by a 2, 3 or 4 as the fifth card? What happens if the game is Triple Double Bonus Poker, and we get 4,000 for a five-coin bet on if four Aces come along with a low card kicker?
We chase Aces, of course. Those big bonanzas are worth pursuing.
How far do we go in our Ace chase? It varies from game to game. Let’s do a comparison of how our play changes as we move from 9-6 Jacks or Better, where all four of a kinds pay 125 coins for a five-coin wager, to 10-7-5 Double Bonus Poker, where you’ll get 800 for four Aces, to 9-6 Double Double Bonus Poker and 9-7 Triple Double Bonus Poker.
Ace of hearts, Ace of spades, Ace of clubs, 8 of hearts, 8 of spades.
A full house is a no-brainer in Jacks or Better. You’re going to hold all five cards and not think twice. For a five-coin bet, you’re getting a guaranteed return of 45 coins. Even if you drop down to Jacks or Better games that pay only 8-for-1 or, heaven forbid, 7-for-1 on full houses, you’ll want to hold all five cards and take the guarantee of a 40- or 35-coin pay.
What if you hold just the Aces and toss away the other pair? Your only guarantee is a 15-coin return for three of a coin, and even the chance to draw four of a kind or other full houses brings your average return per five coins wagered only to 21.54 coins.
That changes when you move to games with monster pays on four Aces. It’s close in 10-7-5 Double Bonus Poker, where holding the full house gets you back 50 coins for your five-coin bet. But the effect of the 800-coin pay on four Aces brings the average return up to 50.57 coins. It’s a marginal gain, but it’s a better play to break up a full house and go for the Aces.
The margin is wider when the full house payoff drops, such as when you’re getting only 45 coins in 9-7-5 or lower Double Bonus pay tables. And the effect is magnified in Double Double and Triple Double Bonus, where the huge payoffs on kicker hands makes it more imperative to chase the Aces.
Bottom line: In Jacks or Better, we’re holding the full house. In Double Bonus, Double Double Bonus, and Triple Double Bonus, the Ace chase is on.
Ace of hearts, Ace of spades, 8 of diamonds, 8 of clubs, 5 of hearts
Jacks or Better has a 2-for-1 payoff on two pairs, so we’re holding both pairs, no matter what the ranks of the cards.
The games in our Ace race pay only 1-for-1 on two pairs, and that makes a difference. The above hand is a close, close call in 10-7-5 Double Bonus Poker. Holding two pairs is still the best play by a tiny margin, with a an 8.83-coin average return for holding both pairs vs. 8.82 for holding just the Aces. If you’re playing a 9-7-5 game, the percentages shift, and keeping the Aces and dumping the other pair becomes the better play by an 8.76-8.40 margin.
In Double Double and Triple Double Bonus, where the top pay tables pay only 9-for-1 on the full houses, AND we have the added attraction of the kicker hands, we’re breaking up two pairs in favor of a pair of Aces from the git-go. In 9-6 Double Double Bonus, the average return per five coins wagered is 9.65 coins on the Ace pair and only 8.40 when holding both pairs, and in 9-7 Triple Double Bonus the margin grows to 10.56-8.42
Ace of clubs, King of hearts, Jack of spades, 8 of hearts, 5 of diamonds
Do four-Ace jackpots ever lead us to hold a single Ace instead of multiple high cards? Yes, if the incentive is large enough.
In Jacks or Better, and even in Double Bonus Poker, the best play in the above hand is to hold King-Jack. We don’t hold the Ace along with King-Jack in such hands mostly because it’s severely limits chances to draw three of a kind and eliminates the chance of drawing a full house. In Jacks or Better, the average return is highest at 2.42 coins per five wagered for holding King-Jack, with either Ace-Jack or Ace-King next best at 2.34.
Moving to Double Bonus, King-Jack remains tops at a 2.25-coin return per five played. The 5-for-1 return on straights in Double Bonus moves Ace-King-Jack up to the second-best play at 2.23, with the lone Ace next at 2.21.
The games with the kicker hands are different. In Double Double Bonus, holding the Ace all by itself (2.27 average return) tops King-Jack (2.21), while in Triple Double Bonus, where the fall in the three-of-a-kind pay to 2-for-1 drops the value of holding King-Jack, the margin is wider at 2.32-2.13.
Online bingo prize money. On any of these games, including Triple Double Bonus, we’d hold an unsuited Queen-Jack instead of a lone Ace. But when the unsuited high cards are King-Queen or King-Jack, we’ll hold the Ace instead in the kicker games.
Ace of hearts, Ace of spades, Ace of clubs, 9 of diamonds, 2 of hearts
Let’s try one that separates Double Double Bonus Poker from Triple Double Bonus Poker. In either Jacks or Better or Double Bonus Poker, you’ll want to hold the three Aces and toss away the 9 and the 2. There’s no big bonus for any kickers, so you want to maximize the chances of drawing the fourth Ace. Throw away both the 9 and 2, and you have 2 chances to draw the fourth Ace from the remaining 47 cards — a 1 in 23.5 shot. Hold another card with the Aces, and now you have only a 1 in 47 chance at drawing the fourth Ace.
It’s an easy call in those games, but what about the games where the kicker comes into play. Are you better off to hold just the Aces, and maximizing chances at four of a kind, or to also hold the 2, ensuring that when you draw the fourth Ace, you’ll get the 2,000-coin jackpot on Double Double Bonus or the big-as-a-royal 4,000-coin hit on Triple Double Bonus.
It depends. In Double Double Bonus Poker, the kicker payoff just isn’t quite large enough to settle for a reduced chance of drawing the fourth Ace. The average return per five coins wagered is 62.45 coins for holding Ace-Ace-Ace, but only 59.15 on Ace-Ace-Ace-2.
In Triple Double Bonus, it’s an entirely different matter. The average return on Ace-Ace-Ace-2 soars to 97.13 coins, while it rises less, to 78.32 when holding just Ace-Ace-Ace. That makes it worth our while to keep the kicker and go jackpot hunting.
Note that given the same holds, the odds of drawing any given hand don’t change from game to game. If we hold three Aces, we have the same chance of drawing a fourth in Jacks or Better as in Double Bonus, and it’s also the same in Double Double Bonus or Triple Double Bonus Poker.
It’s the payoffs that change, and those changes make it imperative for the smart player to adjust strategy. When the payoffs get high enough, then it’s time to change focus and chase those Aces.
The main underpinning of poker is math – it is essential. For every decision you make, while factors such as psychology have a part to play, math is the key element.
In this lesson we’re going to give an overview of probability and how it relates to poker. This will include the probability of being dealt certain hands and how often they’re likely to win. We’ll also cover how to calculating your odds and outs, in addition to introducing you to the concept of pot odds. And finally we’ll take a look at how an understanding of the math will help you to remain emotional stable at the poker table and why you should focus on decisions, not results.
What is Probability?
Probability is the branch of mathematics that deals with the likelihood that one outcome or another will occur. For instance, a coin flip has two possible outcomes: heads or tails. The probability that a flipped coin will land heads is 50% (one outcome out of the two); the same goes for tails.
Probability and Cards
When dealing with a deck of cards the number of possible outcomes is clearly much greater than the coin example. Each poker deck has fifty-two cards, each designated by one of four suits (clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades) and one of thirteen ranks (the numbers two through ten, Jack, Queen, King, and Ace). Therefore, the odds of getting any Ace as your first card are 1 in 13 (7.7%), while the odds of getting any spade as your first card are 1 in 4 (25%).
Unlike coins, cards are said to have “memory”: every card dealt changes the makeup of the deck. For example, if you receive an Ace as your first card, only three other Aces are left among the remaining fifty-one cards. Therefore, the odds of receiving another Ace are 3 in 51 (5.9%), much less than the odds were before you received the first Ace.
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Pre-flop Probabilities: Pocket Pairs
In order to find the odds of getting dealt a pair of Aces, we multiply the probabilities of receiving each card: Billionaire casino 200 free spins.
(4/52) x (3/51) = (12/2652) = (1/221) ≈ 0.45%.
To put this in perspective, if you’re playing poker at your local casino and are dealt 30 hands per hour, you can expect to receive pocket Aces an average of once every 7.5 hours.
The odds of receiving any of the thirteen possible pocket pairs (twos up to Aces) is:
(13/221) = (1/17) ≈ 5.9%.
In contrast, you can expect to receive any pocket pair once every 35 minutes on average.
Pre-Flop Probabilities: Hand vs. Hand
Players don’t play poker in a vacuum; each player’s hand must measure up against his opponent’s, especially if a player goes all-in before the flop.
Here are some sample probabilities for most pre-flop situations:
Post-Flop Probabilities: Improving Your Hand
Rank Of Cards In Poker
Now let’s look at the chances of certain events occurring when playing certain starting hands. The following table lists some interesting and valuable hold’em math:
Many beginners to poker overvalue certain starting hands, such as suited cards. As you can see, suited cards don’t make flushes very often. Likewise, pairs only make a set on the flop 12% of the time, which is why small pairs are not always profitable.
PDF Chart
We have created a poker math and probability PDF chart (link opens in a new window) which lists a variety of probabilities and odds for many of the common events in Texas hold ‘em. This chart includes the two tables above in addition to various starting hand probabilities and common pre-flop match-ups. You’ll need to have Adobe Acrobat installed to be able to view the chart, but this is freely installed on most computers by default. We recommend you print the chart and use it as a source of reference.
Odds and Outs
If you do see a flop, you will also need to know what the odds are of either you or your opponent improving a hand. In poker terminology, an “out” is any card that will improve a player’s hand after the flop.
One common occurrence is when a player holds two suited cards and two cards of the same suit appear on the flop. The player has four cards to a flush and needs one of the remaining nine cards of that suit to complete the hand. In the case of a “four-flush”, the player has nine “outs” to make his flush.
A useful shortcut to calculating the odds of completing a hand from a number of outs is the “rule of four and two”. The player counts the number of cards that will improve his hand, and then multiplies that number by four to calculate his probability of catching that card on either the turn or the river. If the player misses his draw on the turn, he multiplies his outs by two to find his probability of filling his hand on the river.
In the example of the four-flush, the player’s probability of filling the flush is approximately 36% after the flop (9 outs x 4) and 18% after the turn (9 outs x 2).
Pot Odds
Another important concept in calculating odds and probabilities is pot odds. Pot odds are the proportion of the next bet in relation to the size of the pot.
For instance, if the pot is $90 and the player must call a $10 bet to continue playing the hand, he is getting 9 to 1 (90 to 10) pot odds. If he calls, the new pot is now $100 and his $10 call makes up 10% of the new pot.
Experienced players compare the pot odds to the odds of improving their hand. If the pot odds are higher than the odds of improving the hand, the expert player will call the bet; if not, the player will fold. This calculation ties into the concept of expected value, which we will explore in a later lesson.
Bad Beats
Ace In Poker Crossword Clue
A “bad beat” happens when a player completes a hand that started out with a very low probability of success. Experts in probability understand the idea that, just because an event is highly unlikely, the low likelihood does not make it completely impossible.
A measure of a player’s experience and maturity is how he handles bad beats. In fact, many experienced poker players subscribe to the idea that bad beats are the reason that many inferior players stay in the game. Bad poker players often mistake their good fortune for skill and continue to make the same mistakes, which the more capable players use against them.
Decisions, Not Results
One of the most important reasons that novice players should understand how probability functions at the poker table is so that they can make the best decisions during a hand. While fluctuations in probability (luck) will happen from hand to hand, the best poker players understand that skill, discipline and patience are the keys to success at the tables.
A big part of strong decision making is understanding how often you should be betting, raising, and applying pressure.
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Conclusion
A strong knowledge of poker math and probabilities will help you adjust your strategies and tactics during the game, as well as giving you reasonable expectations of potential outcomes and the emotional stability to keep playing intelligent, aggressive poker.
Remember that the foundation upon which to build an imposing knowledge of hold’em starts and ends with the math. I’ll end this lesson by simply saying…. the math is essential.
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By Gerald Hanks
Gerald Hanks is from Houston Texas, and has been playing poker since 2002. He has played cash games and no-limit hold’em tournaments at live venues all over the United States.