Poker Hand Analysis
Published December 22nd, 2005 in blog, p5, poker
Poker is a little hobby of mine and I’ve been keeping track of hands played (in computerized versions of the game) in a database. Amusingly enough, over the last several years, I’ve collected about 16,000 hands. I’m interested in creating some visualizations with this massive amount of data. . . A first, rather rudimentary pass (built with Processing) is at the link above. It shows Texas Hold’em starting hands and their win rate — green for good, red for bad, the brighter, the better/worse (the values are all normalized so the betting amounts are irrelevant, each hand is valued according to it’s average “unit” win per time played. “s” indicates if the hand is suited, “o” for offsuit) The obvious ones — AA, KK, QQ, AK — are best, of course. What’s interesting to see are the hands that are overplayed — QJ suited, Q10 suited, J10 suited. Oh, they sure do look pretty, don’t they. . . Of course, this takes very little into account, nothing about how many players, limits, position, etc. But it’s a start. . .
Funny. In my experience, when I hold on high cards (pair of faces/10s) it seems like more people stay in the hand and the flop ends up being a combination of low cards, leading me to believe that everyone held on high hands. I always stay in on pocket bullets, but I swear they’re the worst hand because I subsequently never see aces on the board.
Of course, this is all probably superstition, as I don’t log my hands into a database
I always feel like I do well when I go in with suited connectors, even when they’re low. This is probably also a superstition, though, as I don’t log my hands into a database either.
Very cool. You should probably use big bets (as opposed to big blinds) as the unit of measurement, as is more conventional for limit.
It’s a great idea.. but how about making the same thing just with the win rate of the hand.. For example.. you have K10s.. what is the odds preflop that THIS is the winning hand.. and how do you calculate it?