Texas Hold’em Playing Styles

Team 4 Matt Darryl Alex

Goals

Have our different players feel unique in the way they play the game

Have the Texas hold’em our players play look and feel like the real thing

Have our players adopt strategy to playing that mimic the professionals

Formal Statement of ProblemTo find in Texas Hold'em, the play style such that given a finite amount of chips in the game, against any other play style, one play style will end with all chips in play.

How to Play Texas Hold’em

Players are dealt two cards to begin

Players can bet, check, or fold based on their hand

After everyone has finished there starting bets the dealer flips over on the the table three more cards called the flop

After the flop players again go around the table betting, calling, and folding

Once the round of betting is over the dealer flips one more card, and the round of betting starts again.

After the final card called the river is flipped over onto the table, the final round of betting begins.

After the final round of betting all remaining players flip there hands and the player with the best combination wins the pot.

Hand Strength

MoneyBags

Not afraid to bet largeWilling to play many starting hands regardless of strengthAggressive play styleA naïve approach to poker with not much consideration to what the other players are doing

The Cheapskate

Will only play the best starting handsA very patient playstyle playing only hands he thinks he will win withWhen his hand is well will play big pots

Joe Schmoe

The test case, what we consider the average playerWill play more hands than CheapSkate but less than MoneyBags.An average between the two extremes of MoneyBags and CheapSkate

Starting Hand Ranking

How it works

Each player will react differently to the same starting hand dealt with every player having a different threshold of quality of starting hand willing to play, and there hand rank and board state determining the amount of money to bet or to fold.

After finishing the starting hand and the first round of bets and folds, each player than use some statistical analysis to look at the amount of outs over the amount of cards left to draw, and the strength of the outs.

Outs we define as the card that can be drawn at any point to complete any one of the winning card combinations

Ex. If your hand consists of 6 , 7 suited and the board consists of 5,8,K, your projected outs for a flush is 8/47 not considering other players hands.

Money Bags Joe Schmoe CheapSkate0

20

40

60

80

100

120

Hands Won (starting chips 100000, average over 100 games)

Hands Won (starting chips 100000, average over 100 games)

Money Bags Joe Schmoe Cheap Skate0

200,000

400,000

600,000

800,000

1,000,000

1,200,000

1,400,000

1,600,000

1,800,000

2,000,000

Chips Won

Chips Won

Money Bags

Joe Schmoe

CheapSkate

68.00% 70.00% 72.00% 74.00% 76.00% 78.00% 80.00% 82.00% 84.00% 86.00%

Win Rate (games won / Games Played)

Win Rate (games won / Games Played)

Questions● Question - How does the probability of the hands affect the bets the different

players make?

● Answer – Each player has a defined starting bet value and that is multiplied against a combined probability of the hand given any amount of cards left to draw.

● Question- Under what circumstances would a player fold there hand?

● Answer – Using the same starting bet value defined for each player, a player will fold when their amount they would bet is smaller by some margin then the current bet.

● Question – The players do not use the same probabilities for there starting hand that they use for post flop calculations. What is the metric for grading starting hands?

● Answer – Each two card starting hand has precalculated value ranging from 1 to 4, one being the best possible two card combo, 8 being the worst.

● Questions – Explain simply in a few adjectives each players style?

● Answer – MoneyBags -Naïve, large bets; CheapSkate – passive, patient; Joe Schmoe – a mix of both, right in the middle

● Questions – How would these players fair against real players?

● Answer – Would not do well, Texas Hold’em can be a very mental game where you are trying to guess the other players hand and with any computer controlled players they can become very predictable.