Understanding Poker Equity
If you are playing at an online casino gaming site, and you plotted out the expected profit of all 1,326 possible hand combinations
you would have a familiar graph with pocket aces staring down from the
top and seven-deuce off-suit looking up from the bottom.
But if you take a closer look at the graph something unexpected jumps out at you.
Equal distances separate all AA, KK, QQ, AK, JJ, TT and AQ hands,
but then 99 and everything else below it are grouped together quite closely.
People who play poker games online should remember this.
Equity Favours Strong Hands
What we are saying is that equity favours the very strong hands
whereas everything else relies on slight advantages.
The distribution of equity in terms of hand strength is uneven.
In a game where everyone played all of their hands Jack-five off suit does not
maintain its dominating equity against worse hands nowhere near the way pocket aces does.
Then to make it even more complicated people don’t play all of their hands.
Players generally drop 70-80% of their hands pre flop.
This means the gaps in equity between jack-seven off suit and king-jack
off suit vanish if we don’t play jack-seven off suit.
Fans of online real money casino games need to stop thinking of hand equity versus hand equity and instead think of hand equity versus range equity.
Don't Over Estimate Your Equity
Poker players are always over estimating their equity.
A great example is when we raise with pocket jacks
and are three-bet in position when playing 100bb poker.
Pocket jacks rank amongst the very best of poker hands but against a three-bet
out of position we might as well be holding pocket deuces.
Unfortunately, due to out perception of equity we just think, "but I have pocket Jacks I can’t fold!"
Where if you had pocket deuces you would say,
"I only have pocket deuces, it’s an easy fold!"
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