party poker

[Subjugation]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but why is a 6,000 person freeroll something to complain about? It's a free shot at real money, and gives you pretty decent online tourney experience.

If you don't like that, then try the $1 NLHE tourneys. The one I played in tonight was only 1,200 people or so. They also have a great sit and go system, where you get only one or two tables of opponents for as little as $5+.50 each.

And the $5 SnG's are pretty winnable. Not too many rocks or sharkies swimming around in that tank.

[NaiLed]

Oh I'll poke her, alright.

i remeber some tv programme where they used that:

guy1> i didn't show any emotion but she still saw through me
guy2> poker face?
guy1> could do

[Subjugation]

lol!

[Galleleo]

Whats with everyone playing poker wasting money?

[Subjugation]

It's only a waste if you choose not to learn the theory behind the game.

Poker offers a major advantage over other casino games in that, the statistical probability of winning increases, depending on your knowledge of the game.

That's why many casinos don't offer a poker room, because casinos don't really make any money off of it. Roulette, on the other hand, is great for casino revenue because there's not a bet on the board where the odds don't favor the house. Even red and black create the illusion that it's a 50/50 wager, but when you factor in the green zero and green double zero, you become a 47% underdog to the house. This means, over the course of thousands of hands, you will lose money, even though you'd perceive to be breaking even.

However, if you play a strong hand in poker against one opponent (for the sake of simplicity), let's say, you have a pair of aces and your opponent has a pair of kings, 80% of the time, you will win the hand. There's not a casino game out there that can lay you those kinds of odds.

Of course it's more complicated than that, but in a nutshell, poker is only about luck in the short term. Over the course of thousands of hands, if you play hands that have a statistical probability of winning against other hands, you will have a +EV (positive expected value). Bottom line, you will win money.

[Troll King]

I've always preferred blackjack.

[Subjugation]

Damn, I suck at that game. That's another game that I've heard that under the correct conditions, you can get +EV with. However, I believe it's pretty hard with the standard casino 3-6 deck chute.

Without counting cards, how do you play?

[Sleepy Weasel]

Of course it's more complicated than that, but in a nutshell, poker is only about luck in the short term. Over the course of thousands of hands, if you play hands that have a statistical probability of winning against other hands, you will have a +EV (positive expected value). Bottom line, you will win money.

Actually, poker is a zero sum game. If everyone at the table is of the same skill level then over the long run everyone is going to come out dead even. Now if you play significantly better than the average person you are playing with then you can win over the long term while if they played with you everygame over the long term they'd all lose their money. So why are so many people playing poker? Because it's an easy game to think you are good at. There is luck involved obviously and in the shorterm anyone can win. The tendency is for people to blame their losses on luck and their wins on skill and think they're better than they are. They read a book, learn the poker lingo, and think they're hot shit.

So the question that gets asked a lot is, if these guys aren't that good but just think they're good, and Sleepy you're always claiming you can clean these suckers out when you go against them, how come they're not broke? Because, and remember this, poker is a zero sum game. Put a bunch of idiots at a table together and they're not going to lose all their money even if they olay online 24 hours a day every, they're going to over the long run break even. That group right there is probably 95% of the people playing on party poker and other internet sites. They only lose money when someone significantly better sits down to play against them, and of course they'll blame that loss on some bad luck. And that doesn't happen all that often because the really really good players don't bother playing the low limit games.

If you play low limit exactly by the book will you make money? Probably, yes your level of play will be just slightly higher enough than average to keep you in the positive. Almost everyone knows the basic starting hand strengths but there are enough people playing for low limit real money that don't that you can take advantage of. Also if you play really low limit .25 or less tables a lot of people there just honestly don't care if they lose. Yeah you'll win against them by playing the smart hands over time, simply because they'd rather play every hand because they want the action and they don't care if it costs them a couple bucks.

It's only a waste if you choose not to learn the theory behind the game.

Poker offers a major advantage over other casino games in that, the statistical probability of winning increases, depending on your knowledge of the game.

That's why many casinos don't offer a poker room, because casinos don't really make any money off of it. Roulette, on the other hand, is great for casino revenue because there's not a bet on the board where the odds don't favor the house. Even red and black create the illusion that it's a 50/50 wager, but when you factor in the green zero and green double zero, you become a 47% underdog to the house. This means, over the course of thousands of hands, you will lose money, even though you'd perceive to be breaking even.

However, if you play a strong hand in poker against one opponent (for the sake of simplicity), let's say, you have a pair of aces and your opponent has a pair of kings, 80% of the time, you will win the hand. There's not a casino game out there that can lay you those kinds of odds.

You're partially right here that yes casinos don't offer poker as much because they don't make money off it but you're reasoning is off. The casino could care jack shit about the odds involved in winning in poker. Why? Because you're not playing poker against the house, you're playing it against other visitors of the casino. The house gains money on a rake of every hand, same with (almost) all the online sites, (which also means to win money playing poker you not only have to beat the other players but you have to beat the 5% or so rake, so just being slightly better than everyone else might not be good enough.) Thus the casino always wins when people play poker, it's impossible for them to lose. So why don't they offer it? Because it's a much slower profit than other casino games like slots. Poker is a slow game, you can fold, you can take your time. You can sit down with $100 and play for hours if you're conservative and not stupid. $100 won't last you 15 minutes at even the lowest slot machine.

Naturally casinos everywhere are now adding poker tables as it's becomming more popular so bringing in more people is worth the slower gains (although not all casinos are adding poker tables)



Oh and just for the record the probability of winning with pocket aces vs pocket kings is around 96%

And yes if you can count cards in blackjack then the odds of winning will statistically be in your favor. Those guys at MIT famously put that to good use. These days they use multiple decks so counting cards is very difficult.

[Subjugation]

You're partially right here that yes casinos don't offer poker as much because they don't make money off it but you're reasoning is off. The casino could care jack shit about the odds involved in winning in poker. Why? Because you're not playing poker against the house, you're playing it against other visitors of the casino.

I appreciate the interesting dialogue. Thanks for putting so much time and thought into your post. However, I disagree with your correction.

You said, "the casino could care jack shit about the odds involved in winning in poker", and that's just not true at all. The casino wouldn't care if you play against visitors or the house, as long as they are making money. The casino gets a rake, true. However, their 5-10% rake is not much more than enough to break even for operations costs. Casinos offer poker for a few reasons, but the two main reasons are to maintain their credibility, and in the hopes that while Uncle Bob is playing poker, Aunt Sue is playing the slot machines, which is where the majority of casino revenue is generated.

This is why casinos have pushed for the poker-hybrid games, like 3-5-7 Poker, and Let It Ride Poker, which give the house a heavy advantage over the user. The fact that it's against the house as opposed to other casino visitors is irrelevant, because if a casino could get away with charging a 30% rake off of every hand, and still get a lot of customers, you bet your ass they wouldn't care if their customers were playing against the house or not.

Oh and just for the record the probability of winning with pocket aces vs pocket kings is around 96%

PPoR.

You would be a 96% underdog if you had 1 remaining draw left, and needed a king to win. I'm assuming you reached this number by taking 52 cards in a deck, minus the 4 hole cards (AA v KK) minus the flop and turn (4 additional cards), making the ratio 44:2 (meaning 44 remaing possible cards, to the remaining 2 kings to make your hand), reduced to a 22:1 underdog, or 1/22=.045, or 4.5%.

However, this doesn't factor in the other possibilities such as splits, favorable boards, or redraws which are going to decrease the percentage to which you are an underdog.

I used the Poker Stove.

------------------------------------------------------------------------
61,642,944 games 0.187 secs 329,641,411 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) / tie (%)

Hand 1: 81.9461 % [ 00.82 00.00 ] { AA }
Hand 2: 18.0539 % [ 00.18 00.00 ] { KK }


------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Galleleo]

I have been to the casino once, only played blackjack and even won a few hands before I lost everything (we only played with like 50 euro) But I went more just to check it out, see how its like in a casino etc. There was this one lady that put like a dime in a slotmachine and won 500000 euro.. lucky bitch <_< Anyways, I am really to lazy to learn to play poker.

[Subjugation]

Oh and just for the record the probability of winning with pocket aces vs pocket kings is around 96%

C'mon bro, you not going to bother to correct yourself? Not even after you tried to school my math?

Any pocket pair is about a 4.5:1 underdog to a higher pair, or about 80%. Your 96% figure assumes your only outs are the two remaining kings in the deck, which would only be correct if the dealer serves up blanks.

[Acidmouse]

Please don't take this the wrong way, but why is a 6,000 person freeroll something to complain about? It's a free shot at real money, and gives you pretty decent online tourney experience.

If you don't like that, then try the $1 NLHE tourneys. The one I played in tonight was only 1,200 people or so. They also have a great sit and go system, where you get only one or two tables of opponents for as little as $5+.50 each.

And the $5 SnG's are pretty winnable. Not too many rocks or sharkies swimming around in that tank.

No one said 6,000 freerolls were a waste of time, but they have a lot of problems over the smaller restricted number freerolls. You basically get all in silly players for the first few hours, and this means sitting tight and only playing the top 4-5 hands. You cant bluff with these freerolls, you might as well go all in with aa pre-flop 10/20 blinds becasue you know atleast one person will call you with a2 offsuit. So if you manage to last 8hrs to the final table a top 2-3 place actually gives you a semi-decent return. You only start to get real decent play in freerolls deep into the money. It would be much better to play freerolls with around 1k or under players, lots of sites offer these. The play tends to be better, the tourny doesnt last all day and you dont get into bad habits that 99.9% of freerolls players adopt.

I have won a fair few of the freerolls with 4k plus entrants and you need shitloads of luck and alot of good play. Until you enter $10+ entry free tournys the standard of play is overall very poor across most sites. I prefer to play against better players so you know your not going to be raised all in with 72 offsuit. If anyone is starting on poker I would avoid freerolls and like you say stick to sng's. Very very easy to make money in the 5 man ones on gaming, stars, pacific or laddys.

[Subjugation]

Sweet fucking avatar.

Yea, I see your point about the 6k person freerolls. I was speaking more from the perspective for a less experienced player to get the taste of what a freezeout format is like.

I agree with you 100% that if you actually play for money, freerolls (at least the midnite ones on Pstars) are pretty much a waste of time.

Another reason I like the SnG format, is it's good practice for when you get to final tables in a tourney, playing shorthanded with increasing blinds, and playing heads up, which you just can't replicate in ring games.

BTW, I've never played at Pacific, how do you like their software and players?

[Acidmouse]

i dont bother with pacific anymore although its a decent site and the software is above average.

ahh my aa is fav over your ak