Poker Statistics #1
Knowing some basic statistics about poker hands and poker draws will make many of your decisions at the table much easier. Your recall of an exact percentage or the odds to the last decimal is almost never called for; simply have a rough idea of how often cards fall and what your general odds are of making a draw is generally all that is needed.
The first statistic most Hold’em players learn is this one. Your odds of being dealt pocket aces are 220 to 1. Now that may seem a daunting number, only getting those big, beautiful Aces once in every 200+ hands but the first lesson of winning poker is that you must win hands without great cards most of the time. Two hundred and twenty to one is your statistical proof.
Look a bit deeper at that number, 220 to 1, and you will see that at a full table of ten players; someone will be dealt Pocket Aces once every 22 deals; so not losing to aces is a better poker strategy to learn than winning when you do get them. You are going to be facing aces a lot more often than you have them yourself.
One more calculation you can make from these statistics. The odds on your having Pocket Kings on any given hand is 220 to 1, same odds for Pocket Queens and Pocket Deuces. So your odds of starting a Hold’em hand with a pair is 220 divided by thirteen possible pairs or 17 to 1. Every seventeen hands, on average, you should get a pocket pair. Further at a full ten player table, the odds on any one deal that one player is holding a pocket pair is 1.7 to 1.
-This is Beginner’s Poker Blog Post #140
