Dear Mark,
You briefly mentioned in a past column the importance of position in Texas Hold'em.
What did you mean by that? Dale O.
What position is NOT, Dale, is your bun-warming seat assignment in a game.
Position refers to your place at the table relative to other players who are
active in a particular pot. The early positions in an eight-handed game like
Texas Hold'em are the first three players to act on their hands; the middle
positions would be the next three, and the late positions are the last two.
Late position is the superior position for you, since you have the advantage
of knowing what your opponents have done. Unless game rules force you to act
first, you always have position over anyone sitting immediately to your right,
since you act on your hand after the player to your right takes action, quite
likely giving you useful information.
Also, Dale, you will hear announcers on the World Poker Tour confide that a
player just made a position bet. What he means is that a player made a wager
more on the strength of his position than on the strength of his hand. Many
players, myself included, are more liberal about the hands they will play from
a late position. For example, a pair of deuces or a suited ace/deuce as a starter
hand in Texas Hold'em would warrant some action in late position. Yet,
if I were in early position, and though the hand initially looked appealing,
I generally wouldn't play it.
Dear Mark,
Please settle a dispute I have with my wife. In video poker, which start-up
hand is more valuable, one with an ace or one with a jack? My wife believes
neither as you get your money back with either once paired up. I believe the
jack is because you can make more paying hands with it. Also, what about two
aces versus two jacks as a starter hand? Steve S.
In Jacks or Better video poker, Steve, a lone jack is worth more than an Ace.
True, paired up after the draw they are hands of equal value, but thinking of
straights and straight flushes, a jack is a better starter card than an ace.
The jack can be part of a 7-8-9-10-J; or 8-9-10-J-Q; or a 9-10-J-Q-K, straight
flush, whereas, other than sharing a mutual royal flush, the only other straight
flush an ace can make is an ace-2-3-4-5. The same reasoning applies for straights.
By and large, two jacks as starters are worth exactly the same as two aces in
Jacks or Better video poker. Both hands return your money if you draw no supporting
cards. The same value holds true for three jacks versus three aces, and a four-of-a-kind
for either hand. However, video poker also offers various "Bonus"
games where four aces pay quite a bit more than four jacks do. On these bonus
games, a pair of aces would definitely be worth more than two jacks.
Dear Mark,
I have played video poker for a long time, successfully I might add, but one
hand keeps hexing me. Anytime I get three-of-a-kind with a need to draw two cards,
I rarely get a full house or a four-of-a-kind. I figure the odds of getting either
hand are not overwhelming, but I was wondering what they actually were. Calvin
H.
Cursed or not, Calvin, drawing to a full house or a four-of-a-kind should happen
more often than once in a blue moon. In your case, when you discard the two
cards of little value, for instance, you keep three aces and throw away a nine
of diamonds and a five of clubs, odds are you will improve your hand to either
to a full house or four aces 10.4% of the time.
Gambling quote of the week: "You've seen my horses. They only
need a driver who is worthy of them." Lew Wallace, Ben Hur (1880)
