If you would, please.

Hey, I never ask anyone to do anything in this blog but I'm asking you now to help out here. If you scroll down on the right you'll see a widget I added from Barack Obama's voteforchange.org. Rumor has it that Mr. President elect plays a mean game of poker. I'm asking you to take a few minutes of your time and help support the cause for getting online poker's status changed.

It seems silly to me that the NFL has a carve out to keep Fantasy Football legal (which is actually gambling), as well as Interstate Lotteries ( which is serious gambling if you look at the odds of winning), and Horse Racing (um, you guessed it....gambling) but online poker is made out to be the big bad wolf on the internet.

There is more skill involved in poker than randomly picking some numbers on a lottery sheet, or guessing which quarterback is going to light it up this week. So out of all the gambling games mentioned above we have exemptions for the ones that a monkey could do and your odds of winning would be the same.

Now let's say the monkey was playing $1/$2 No Limit Texas Hold Em with $200 and had Ac,Kc pre-flop and is up against a player who plays 40% of his hands. He bets $10 and the monkey calls. He's already a 66% favorite against the other guy's range of hands. (Examples below, courtesy of Poker Stove)


Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

765,399,888 games 1.562 secs 490,012,732 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 66.445% 64.70% 01.74% 495236094 13336967.50 { AcKc }
Hand 1: 33.555% 31.81% 01.74% 243489859 13336967.50 { 44+, A2s+, K2s+, Q4s+, J7s+, T7s+, 97s+, 87s, A3o+, K7o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T9o }

Let's take it further. Suppose the flop comes up Ah 5c 8c and the monkey is faced with an all in bet from the opponent. Should he fold? If he does he is making a critical mistake since he is now a 91% favorite in the hand.

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

372,240 games 0.046 secs 8,092,173 games/sec

Board: Ah 5c 8c
Dead:

equity win tie pots won pots tied
Hand 0: 91.213% 90.59% 00.62% 337208 2325.00 { AcKc }
Hand 1: 08.787% 08.16% 00.62% 30382 2325.00 { 44+, A2s+, K2s+, Q4s+, J7s+, T7s+, 97s+, 87s, A3o+, K7o+, Q8o+, J8o+, T9o }

The point of this is to let you non-poker playing readers know you can calculate your odds of winning a poker hand in any situation by reading your cards and seeing what kind of odds the pot is offering you. If the price is wrong you fold. If it is right you must play the hand because, if you've done your homework on the game, mathematically you'll win in the long run by making sound decisions.

Poker is the only game on the UIGEA list where this is possible.