Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Guess the relative hand strengths

Today I watched the latest episode of Party Poker's Big Game (not to be confused with the PokerStars Big Game), which is not the most polished poker show on the tube, but has some good players and action.

The following hand came up. I have blacked out the hands' associated winning percentages, with my highly advanced digital image manipulation skillz.



I was surprised at the percentages--to the point that I thought there might have been a production error. But I entered the same cards into the odds calculator at cardplayer.com, and it matched what the show's graphics had displayed.

If somebody had asked me to put these hands in descending order of likelihood of winning at showdown, I would have gotten it wrong, though after looking at the numbers and thinking about it for a while I can see why it is the way it is. See if you can accomplish it better than I did.

Scroll down for the same screen shot with the percentages restored to it.









3 comments:

--S said...

I guess I do remember something about playing after two years away. I only got the last two wrong. I almost smart ;)

SirFWALGMan said...

I actually got the order right.. but I am surprised the 56 s00ted is so high of a percentage...

Rakewell said...

5-6 suited is always at least a decent crAAKKer hand, but here its relative value is increased (1) because there are no other diamonds out, and (2) the other hands contain each other's outs and straight blockers. Basically, the 5-6 has big swaths of the deck all to itself.