Texas Calculatem and Poker Office Blog

The tight aggressive way that I'm using Calculatem is working well. Rather than doing any calls pre-flop I either raise if there's any signal, or fold otherwise. My tightenned Calculatem settings mean that I'm not raising with garbage, and the additional money in the pot give me the pot odds to bet/raise later on.

I'm still spending more time on my betting blog (Casino and Sports Betting Strategies - Even the Odds). The big difficulty with these things is getting increased traffic. If you have any ideas on how I can boost it's traffic please let me know!

My new blog is almost complete. The beta version is available below:

Casino and Sports Betting Strategies - Even the Odds
Want high returns from a low risk investment? Even the Odds in Casino and Sports Betting through bonuses, special offers, aberrations and arbitrage.

After reading Small Stakes Hold 'Em I'm understanding the game a little better. I won $15 earlier at Ladbrokes Poker but that was due to luck rather than skill.

Couldn't keep away from the Poker and busted my Absolute account. I can't honestly say if this was due to poor play or bad luck. I've been reading Small Stakes Hold 'Em and am learning new concepts. However, if the cards are poor all you can do is fold and let the blinds work away...

I can no longer play solid poker or follow Calculatem's signals as I'm on a total tilt. I was down £20 in a live game yesterday and my online performance can be seen below.

The next week shall therefore be spent developing a new betting strategies website / blog.

New visitors could try reading the following articles:

- Online Poker Freeroll timetable
- How to use  Calculatem and Poker Office
- The All In Strategy

Managed a win using the Best Damn Hand in Poker

Image temporarily removed due to formatting issues.

While my personal P&L has taken a kicking, tHREAT_69 has had excellent success on $2/$4 tables at Empire Poker, after using the settings from my How to use Calculatem and Poker Office successfully article.

Perhaps Calculatem performs better at those stakes, but unfortunately my low personal bankroll of $200 can't handle such stakes yet.

Anyway, I must say thank you to tHREAT_69, for both his kind comments and demonstrating that Poker can be beaten with Calculatem.

I'm on a bad downturn at the moment and it's not fun. The cards are not in my favour and no one is folding to aggression. I had 2 AA's busted. One by a backdoor flush which was particularly frustrating.

Even the All In strategy is stalling at the moment. I moved my experiment to Ultimate Bet where there are more $0.01/$0.02 tables, but everyone just folds to my All Ins which makes it hard to overcome the blinds.

Introduction

This post will provide a statistical analysis of the all in strategy that I have been experimenting with lately. In brief, the strategy involves waiting for a good premium hand and going all in. It sounds simple and it is!

Definitions

Excellent Premium Hand

I have defined an Excellent Premium Hand as a hand in the folling group:
AA-99, Aks-AQs, KQs-KJs, QJs
These are the sorts of hands that I believe other players will call my all ins with.

All In Hand (AIH)

Using I calculated the equity values of a few top premium Poker hands when played against one or two Excellent Premium Hands. The equity values below and expected returns per $1.00 of All In bets:


(Useful probabilties can be found here, though the table above was all calculated manually in Excel)
The table shows that hands AA-QQ have a positive expectancy against one or two callers. AKs has a breakeven expectancy.
I shall therefore define my All In Hands as AA-QQ and AKs. The reason why I have included AKs is because I feel that hands won through stealing blinds could give it a slight edge.

The All In Strategy

The All In Strategy (AIS) will be executed as follows:
- Sit down at a No Limit Holdem table.
- Buy in with 50+ Big Blinds but less than the lowest pot on the table
- Post Blinds and check/fold
- If you're the on the big blind, check and are dealt the nuts on the flop then go all in.
- If you're dealt an AIH then go all in pre-flop.
- If you win a hand then leave the table and come back when you're able to buy in with your original amount again.

Estimated Expected Returns

At this point I am unable to estimate any probabilities for how many opponents will call, fold or leave dead money in the pot when I go all in. However, I will do my best to make some realistic estimates.

For my estimates I shall consider a $1/$2 full 10 player table where I buy in with $100 and refill up to $100 everytime I post a big blind. Every 100 hands will therefore cost $30 in blinds.

Summing the probabilities of being dealt an AIH gives the probability of being dealt an AIH. This is 1.67%. So I will be dealt 1.67 AIh's per 100 hands.
If my opponents all fold when I go All In then I'll get over
$3 * 0.0167 * 100 = $5.00
from the blinds (over, since there could be money from callers who fold). This will give me atleast $5.00 and is non-optimal considering I'll be paying $30 in blinds.

If 1 opponent calls, and assuming a 5% rake, then I'll win over
$100*($0.63+$0.42+$0.18)*0.95=$116.24.
[N.B. The above uses rounded figures that I ignored in Excel]
per 100 hands. This will give me an expected return of over $86.24 per 100 hands.

Similarly, if 2 opponents call then I'll win over
$200*($0.48+$0.25+$0.06)*100=$148.42
per 100 hands. This will give me an expected return of over $118.42 per 100 hands.

Possible Calculation Errors

- The All ins might not always be $100 as that would require a rebuy after every blind is posted (a lot of effort!).
- Loose players could call me with hands that aren't in the Excellent Premium Hand set. But this will work in my favour and therefore does not concern me.
- Players are always coming and going and seats could easily remain unfilled. The blinds will therefore cost a little more than I have estimated.

The Story So Far

This strategy sounds very far fetched due to its simplicity. I have therefore beeing trying it out on $0.01/$0.02 tables at Noble Poker with a $1.00 buy in.
results so far

Conclusion

It's currently too early to tell whether or not this is a viable Poker Strategy. The analysis is looks good but practical issues could easily see it fail. The only way forward is to run a practical experiment. I shall do this and results shall be posted on Poker Profits.

# posted by The Edge @ 3:43 PM 2 comments   
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My recent downturn is due to excessively loose play. Absolute Poker will send players hand histories so I posted a few on <2+2> and did some analysis on them. My recent play has been appaling. I'm too loose and bet without pot odds.

Just to confirm these observations, I looked at my stats at Absolute Poker and discovered that my % flops seen is 30%. It should be closer to 20%!

To conclude this post, I need to keep my head and stop chasing hands.

If you're interested in a Reciprocal Link Exchange with Poker Profits then please leave a comment below and I'll act on it ASAP.

Please note that I am mainly interested in linking to other Poker Blogs and Poker Websites.

Had some bad luck on Absolute Poker. On one hand the whole table was full of rags. I bet all the way and my opponent had two pair 10's over 2's played from the button

The next bad beat cam when I was the big blind and raised with 99. I hit a 9 on the flop and kept raising. Unfortunately a second 10 appeared on the river. So my opponent who was UTG+2 won with a full house 10's full of 8's.

It was rather frustrating and I was down $5 on the session. My Absolute Poker session is down $5 since the start as well. I'm not impressed.

On a more positive side I won £55 in a live game yesterday. But I won't count those profits in this blog as it isn't in line with my online studies.

Regarding the All in experiment, I made a whopping $0.94 with pocket aces. I'd paid 4 big blinds before getting the Aces which cost me $0.12. The profits aren't big but the experiment is proving successful so far. I just need to find more Poker rooms to try it in.

My ALL IN quest has started well enough. I managed 2 ALL IN's and won them both. One was QQ and the other was KK. My overall profit is $2.07.

The below information is a more detailed analysis my strategy and it looks favourable. I have posted it on pso to get some feedback on it. I doubt it'll be positive but this won't be a scalable Poker strategy and is just a bit of fun anyway.

Here are some exciting sums for anyone who's interested...

(stats from here)

The chances of being dealt on of my "ALL IN" (AA-QQ or AKs) is

3 * 0.45 (AA-QQ)
+
0.3 (AKs)
=
0.165

From my own calculations...

P(AA-QQ) = 3 * (3/52) [first card A-Q] * (3/51) [once we have an A-Q, the next card must be A-Q]
=
.136

P(AKs) = (1/13) [An Ace first] * (1/51) [next card must be king of Ace's suit] * 2 (two ways [of getting this - AK or KA]
=.30

Summing the 2 gives 0.166 which is close enough to that website.

Anyway, to continue...

Assuming I play a $0.01/$0.02 table it's going to cost me $0.30 in blinds per 100 hands.

For each 100 hands I'll get 1.66 premium hands.
On average, I'll win 66.6% of these (average the equity values from the previous post).
I'm going to asssume a 5% rake.
I recon I'll atleast double up when I win and I'm depositing $1.00 a time. So for every 100 hands I'll get atleast

0.95 [rake] * 1.66 [# hands I'll get] * 0.666 [Winning Percentage] * 1.00 [profit]
= $1.05

So to conclude, I expect to make atlesat $1.05-$0.30=$0.75 per hundred hands played if one player calls.

Analysis Holes

:

Positive

- I'll be getting extra dead money from folded blinds.
- A lot of players will see my miniscule all-ins with hands that aren't within my Premium Hand Range.

Negative / Unknown

- I won't always be going all-in with $1.00 as it's a lot of effort to redeposit after EVERY blind.
- I have assumed that only 1 player will call my all-in. I need to analyse what will happen if this is not so.
- I have assumed that other players will be able to match my all-in in full, rather than going all in themselves, with $0.50, for example.



Conclusion

Playing on $0.01/$0.02 tables, I should make over $0.75 per 100 hands played.

Played on a $0.25/$0.50 table as I intended at Absolute Poker.

Made back $5 but am not convinced I played very well. I was chasing cards and am not sure if the 6 player tables are so suitable for the tight-aggressive style that I'm trying to develop. Set Calculatem to loose post-flop, but still feel that my discretionary play is still better. I'm waiting for the pot odds version to come out but am not holding my breath. I've been waiting for a simple money printing app to be written for me at work for over 3 months! So I doubt the Calculatem developers will be any faster.

Anyway, I must continue to grind away and develop my skills.

Went onto a $0.25/$0.50 NL table by mistake. Was dealt AA pre-flop on BB and got Axx on the flop. Kept on pressing raise not realising I was going all in. The other punter had a straight....

DOH DOH DOH! Why didn't I pay more attention and play the limit table as I intended???? Lost $10 from that poor form.

While I'm at it I guess I may as well try another ridiculous experiment. This will be to just go all in on a NLHE table when I have good odds to do so. The initial trials will be conducted on a $0.01/$0.02 table at Noble Poker. I will make deposits of $1.00 and risk a total of $10.00 in rebuys.

Using Poker Stove I calculated the equity values of the top premium hands against a "range of premium hands".

The "range of premium hands" has been defined as:

AA-99, AKs, KQs, QJs, JTs

The equity values of the following hands against a single hand from the range of premium hands are:

Hand Equity
AA 80.75%
KK 71.28%
QQ 66.26%
JJ 48.49%
A Ks 48.12%
K Qs 41.68%

My plan is to therefore go all in wheneven I have AA-QQ or AKs. I shall fold everything else unless I get a nut flop from the big blind. I have added AKs even though it has less than 50% equity as I'm hoping that weak players will also also fold and/or play poor hands

Possible Problems:

Blinds and the rake could easily eat into profits.
Opponents might not call my all ins with the weakest of my "range of premium hands".

The aggression experiment definitely prevented me from being a call station. I'd set Calculatem's minimum pre-flop hands to those defined as being worthy of pre-flop raise in Carson. However, due to the rules I set upon myself I was often capping pre-flop and on the flop - thus destroying a lot of my pot odds.

Every cloud has a silver lining and this test has taught me that even if you're raising all the time you still won't totally bleed chips. I lost $11 in this appallingly played session which is a little more than what I'd make in a good session.

In the future I'll try to play more sensibly, whatever that is.

I am not playing aggressively enough. Therefore for my next two table session I shall not call on pre-flop or on the flop. I will only bet, raise or fold.

Made $11 two tabling $0.25/$0.50 at Absolute Poker for 2 hours. At this rate I may as well get a job at MacDonalds, but I will stay strong and keep grinding away. When I started trading I was bleeding thousands left right and centre. But now it's a matter of routine to print it rather than lose it.

Anyway, I still feel that I'm not playing optimal Poker. The two tabling was definitely hindering my ability to think coherently, especially when I was trying to chat to the other players at the same time. Also, my objective of getting in more raises suffered as I did not always manage to work out whether or not a drawing hand was worth a raise or call. Calling is definitely bad and I should try to stop doing it so often!

It's just a pity that Poker Office is not compatible with Absolute Poker and Ladbrokes Poker as I could do with some statistics on how my play has been over the last week.

In the future I will turn off the Absolute Poker chat function to give me more time to think.

Had a good session on 6 player and 9 player $0.25/$0.50 tables at Absolute Poker.

The 9 player table was exceptionally slow and I broke even but I made $10 from the 6 player table. I had luck on my side, but am finding it hard sticking to my super tight aggressie strategy. It's so easy to press the call button from SB when I have 27o just to see if I can mock an opponent with a lucky flop.

Introduction

This article will give readers advice on how to optimise Texas Calculatem in conjunction with Poker Office. I will be updating this article on a regular basis as I learn more about both the tools and the game, so please don't be surprised if you come back and find a few changes here and there.

Poker Office is free for players who open new accounts with Empire Poker or Noble Poker. Visit the Poker Office website for more information.

Texas Calculatem is free for player who open a new account with either Bodog Poker (and deposit $20) or Paradise Poker (and deposit $50). Click Here for more information.

Before risking their own funds on Texas Calculatem's recommendations, players can test it for free using real money by openning a new account with either Royal Vegas Poker and/or Crazy Vegas Poker, and claiming their $10 no deposit bonuses.

Both of these tools are therefore high affordable.

UPDATE ON 17th July 2005

If MBO / 2 >= OTW then raise (or bet if it's been checked to you)

changed to

If MBO / 4 >= OTW then raise (or bet if it's been checked to you).

The change was made because the OTW takes into account hitting cards on the turn or river. I therefore need to be doubly confident of winning before I want to bet/raise.

Update 11th August 2005

Removed the configuration image and typed in the values instead. This was because the gif kept on getting deleted.

Texas Calculatem

Texas Calculatem with Auto-Read is an Odds Calculator that will watch you play, offer instant odds and advice as you play, and therefore give you a significant edge when playing Poker online. One of its best features is that it will automatically read most online Poker rooms, removing the need for users to manually input every hand as it appears.

The Texas Calculatem website describes it as:

Texas Calculatem™ with Auto-Read watches you play, offers instant odds and advice throughout the game, and gives you a considerable edge in the fast-paced online environment. This poker odds calculator is an absolute must for anyone who plays at real money tables. It is also a valuable teaching aid for people wanting to learn the basics of game strategy.

Texas Calculatem's™ intuitive interface shows you your exact situation at a glance. The table, advice bar, and odds chart give you just enough information without being too overwhelming. A novice may choose to simply follow the advice given. More experienced users will find the additional info, including odds of making certain hands, odds of one of your opponents making certain hands, # outs, pre-flop hand strength & Sklansky score, very useful. In the fast paced online environment, it is essential to have a calculator watching along with you.

Under certain conditions, Texas Calculatem can provide strong advice, especially to novices who may find it hard to count all their outs and/or see all the possibilities of their hands. From my current experience, Texas Calculatem's main strengths and weakness are as follows:

Strengths

• The pre-flop play is fairly solid when the settings are tightenned up. According my Poker Office records Texas Calculatem can play a tight-aggressive pre-flop game.


• Texas Calculatem can quickly calculate the odds of various draws and give you the probabilities of various draws.

Weaknesses

• The post-flop advice can be very weak. It often fails to recommend a raise when the pot odds suggest otherwise, and on other occasions will limp with a weak hand when it should fold. I therefore use a strategy based on Texas Calculatem's estimated Odds to Win. This has proved fairly successful so far.
  

Optimal Settings for Texas Calculatem

The first step users must take once Texas Calculatem has been installed is to update the settings. To do this go to Options and use the configuration below:

50% Small Blind
94% Big Blind
93% Just lleft of Big Blind
83% Dealer Button
90% Other Position

Set "Odds Display" to Ratio, as this make comparing MBO with the Pot Odds simpler.

The "watch fold depth" setting estimates what cards players were not holding based on the community cards showing at the time they folded. This uses up extra CPU time, but most modern computers should be able to handle this without significant degradation in performance. It should therefore be turned on.

The "Pre Flop Advice" needs to be set to "Tight", and the "Set minimum playable hands, by position" checkbox should be selected too. I have used the slider settings from the "hands to open the betting with a raise" table on page 135 of Carson.

These changes tighten up the pre flop game significantly, though I personally use a certain amount of descretion, especially if Texas Calculatem recommends "call unraised only".

I leave the "Post Flop Advice" on "Avg", and usually take its advice with a pinch of salt, though I always glance at it before making a tough decision to see if I'm missing anything obvious.

How to use Texas Calculatem effectively

Abbreviations

PO = Pot Odds - you'll need to calculate these yourself.
OTW = Odds To Win - this is the estimated provided by Texas Calculatem.
MBO = Maximum Bet Odds. This figure is equal to the number of opponents active in the current hand.

Pre-Flop

If Texas Calculatem tells you to fold then you should generally fold pre-flop.
However, if you are in the small blind position and the pot odds are greater than your OTW (Odds to Win) then you should consider calling. This is because the small blind does not have to pay as much to call.

If Texas Calculatem's advice is to call unraised then you should
- raise if no one has raised.
- call if someone has raised.

If Texas Calculatem gives any other advice then the settings are tight enough for you to keep on re-raising pre-flop.

Post-Flop

For post-flop play, I prefer to use a combination of Texas Calculatem's OTW estimate and the Pot Odds. This strategy has given me superior results as it is less vulnerable to aggression and bluff raises.

Concise Strategy

To decide what to do, work your way down the list below until a condition is met.

If MBO / 4 >= OTW then raise (or bet if it's been checked to you).
If PO / 2 >= OTW then bet (or call if it's been bet or raised to you)
If PO >= OTW then check (or call if it's been bet or raised to you)
If none of the above conditions are met then fold.

Explanation

The strategy raises if the odds are significantly in favour of the player, but only calls if the bet is still profitable. Assuming that Texas Calculatem's estimates are accurate, this is simply a straight forward statistical arbitrage strategy, applied to the game of Poker.

Using Poker Office to pick a suitable table

Poker Office is a Poker Tracker program that allows you to track all of your opponents actions as well as your own game, while you are playing, without any need for hand histories or user input. It works with a few Party Poker skins such as Empire Poker and Coral Poker (also known as Eurobet), and their developers are working on making it compatible with a wider range of Poker rooms. It has a Live Tracker function that will track up to 4 poker tables in real time. The Live Advisor function will then present the player with useful probabilities and the characteristics of the opponents based on their historical actions.

An effective method of using Poker Office, is to open up 4 tables you're potentially interested in (e.g. $0.50/$1.00 fixed limit tables), and then using the Live Tracker monitor them for desirable characteristics. After about 30 minutes Poker Office will have collected enough information for you to decide whether or not you wish to play at any of the tables analysed. Any table that's passive and with a high number of players seeing the flop would be a good place to start.

For example, if you find a table with 3 or more players who frequently see over 50% of flops, then it's time to sit down and make some money!

Poker Office Free Trial

At time of writing, the Poker Office evaluation version only lets users track 300 hands. This is not nearly enough to gain any sort of insite into it's usefulness. It is therefore recommendable to acquire Poker Office via the Empire Poker offer.

Useful Links

• Texas Calculatem


• Poker Office


• Royal Vegas Poker - free $10 bonus, no deposit required


• Crazy Vegas Poker - free $10 bonus, no deposit required

I just played my first session at Absolute Poker and broke even in the process. I should have been up but I over played a couple of hands, was too loose, and somehow got beaten by someone who played 23o from SB position.

I haven't played any Poker today, but Pacific Poker sent me an voucher for a free $10 if I sign up. Empire Poker also sent me a letter which included an mention of their Daily Freerolls. There are always lots of freerolls that I always fail to take advantage of. I have therefore set up a Daily Freerolls page on this blog to help myself remember when they are.

I also have yet to start playing with my free $25 from Absolute Poker. I'll probably play on Absolute Poker rather than Ladbrokes Poker this weekend just to try it out. It's just a shame that none of these rooms work with Poker Office.

Regular freerolls are a feature of most Poker sites. These are an excellent way to try out new ideas and make some free money.

(All times are GMT).

Ladbrokes Poker

Daily

15:00 $500
19:30 $200

Empire Poker

Daily (must play atleast 50 raked hands in the 24 hours prior to start of tournament)

00:00 $500 Guaranteed Daily Free Roll NL
05:00 $500 Guaranteed Daily Free Roll NL
08:00 $500 Guaranteed Daily Free Roll NL
20:00 $500 Guaranteed Daily Free Roll NL

Bet365 Poker

Daily

01.00 $1000 Freeroll
12.00 $200 Freeroll
16.00 $1000 Freeroll

Every Saturday

19.00 $5000 Freeroll
19.00 $1000 Freeroll

Raked hand required freerolls

Daily

04.00 $2000 100 raked hands previous 24 hours required
06.45 $1000 100 raked hands previous 24 hours required
18.00 $2000 100 raked hands previous 24 hours required
23.30 $1000 100 raked hands previous 24 hours required

First Sunday of each month

$30,000 Freeroll 250 raked hands required for the previous month

Took a small $0.43 hit at Ladbrokes Poker today. I should have broken even. But earlier on I didn't notice an obvious straight and bet on the river when all I had was 2 pair. Doh!

The day started off well with the guys from Poker-Strategy.org awarding me a free $25 account with Absolute Poker.

I had a few more Poker Theory discussions with Mr Welsh in the office and he worked through some Poker hand case studies to demonstrate the theory behind equity value. I also learned that it's sometimes important to raise in order to deny opponents the opportunity of getting good pot odds on their draws. There's so much I've missed in my many perusals of Carson's book!

Anyway, I was determined to make use of my newfound knowledge and therefore played a few more hands a single Ladbrokes Poker $0.25/$0.50 table.

In order to plug up the holes in my game I knew that I needed to (possibly) tighten up and (definitely) play more aggressively. Before starting, I therefore decided that I'd only play truly great premium hands - the sort that would be worth raising pre-flop. I probably managed this for over 70% of my plays. I also bet/raised a lot more on the flop to force out weak hands. It wasn't perfect and I undoubtedly made mistakes. But I've attemped to record my losing hands for later analysis and came out with $10.00 profit which is not bad for such low limit table.

Had a flat P&L session at Ladbrokes Poker on the $0.25/$0.50 tables. I'm just going back to basics by re-reading Carson and browsing the twoplustwo Poker forum.