Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

The computer part is interesting, but it wouldn't actually fly. Take a look at the first heads up hand:

Small blind (opponent) gets dealt Ace-Four, a very strong heads up hand, because ace-high will be good lots of time heads up. Dealer gets Ten-two, which is a very bad hand that makes bottom pair, or a pair with a bad "kicker" (if two hands match, you go to the high card - a 2 can never be high enough to play). Ten-two is junk. Anyway, a good heads-up player will probably raise Ace-four 3-5 times the value of the pot.

Okay, so then the board comes down 989 on the flop. At this point, opponent has ace high on a pair of nines. He's feeling quite good. He probably bets out, maybe half the pot. At this point, any sane player folds the ten-two if they called to begin with.

If you call, and the catch the pair of tens on the turn, the person will probably think you're an idiot. If this happens 2-3 times in a game, and you're winning more than probability suggests, they'll probably nab you for cheating. Which, depending on where you're at, winds up in you getting thrown out of the game politely, thrown out of the game impolitely, or treated... well, really impolitely.

Long story short - interesting computer usage, real life application low-ish even if you wanted to try something like this, which I wouldn't recommend anyways.

This requires a stacked deck, which means it only works once anyway. Unless you have a lot of prepared decks lying around, you won't have to worry about it happening "2-3 times in a game."

You are dealer once an orbit. You have one extra deck that is passed to a 3rd party during the orbit, and the deck is stacked. When it's your turn to deal, the deck is switched with your stacked deck; the previous deck is passed back to the 3rd party to be stacked again. The 2 decks rotate in this way. Deck switching seems trivial; passing the deck to another every orbit seems the tricky bit. But hey, I'm no con artist :)

Yeah, I wouldn't recommend it either, but in the situation you describe couldn't the cheater just raise on the flop? If they get looked up by their opponent, when they catch a lucky Ten on the turn they can just say they were bluffing with air.

I'm not a heads-up player so I'm not sure how often you could get away with such gambits. Also, in this situation the opponent might suspect the cheater holds JT, T9, 98, 87, 76, A9, A8 or any number of other hands that could have hit the flop. Wouldn't a solid heads-up player fold A4 frequently enough in that situation that they never realize they're playing against a stacked deck?

Maybe, but I think first action heads up is on the small blind (opponent). He'll be raising that hand. You play most hands heads up, but you toss 10-2 offsuit normally to a raise. After the flop comes down, then I think first action is the dealer. If he bluffs 10-2 there, that's a complete bluff - and the paired board makes it less likely he hit something, though JT would be an option for someone who calls. If he bets the flop, and the turn, maybe the Ace-Four folds at some point. But if he shows it down (and some people will), it'll look like a completely unnatural sequence of events. You usually don't call significant raises with 10-2 offsuit, and then you're pure bluffing when the flop hits - you have almost no chance of making a hand, except the very small chance you hit a ten and they don't have an overpair or hit an overcard or have a straight themselves.

The dealer always has position by definition (we deal to our left and finish with ourselves, and action starts to the left and finishes with us).

The page is actually mistaken in this aspect; it has out opponent labelled as "SB" whereas in fact hero, the dealer, will be SB and out opponent is BB.

A solid heads-up player will pretty much never fold A4 from the small blind. small blind is also the button, so they'll have position for the rest of the hand.

Really, the only question is how much to raise, or if to limp. the limp/mini-raise tactics would be there essentially to add some deception to post-flop play.

Ace high is a pretty strong hand heads-up, even with the shit kicker, as the odds are against your opponent flopping any pairs at all.

Allow me to offer a HU pros take on the hand :)

In a heads up pot, The dealer is the small blind. In both fixed limit and NL variants, a competent player will raise close to 100% of his range preflop. A4 will be defending by the opponent in fixed limit, unlikely to be 3betting (we need to have some weak aces in our non-3betting range), but actually quite often folded in no limit due to reverse implied odds, assuming stacks were 30BBs deep+.

On 998, a 'donk bet' from A high is very unlikely and a pretty poor, unbalanced play with a weak showdownable hand. Our hero will continuation bet in fixed limit and NL (probably somewhere around 2/3 pot). A checkraise would be a very poor play in NL; possible thin value play in FL but XR will be called by the 3straight anyway.

In all likelyhood the turn will be seen in FL (from whereon the dealer will certainly win the hand), unlikely in NL (button will win without showdown preflop or on the flop)

I was thinking the same thing, a lot of those winning hands are hands that shouldn't win in actual gameplay. It'd be neat to see an algorithm that maximizes the hands that the dealer not only wins, but should win, for small numbers of players. This would be pretty complex I'm thinking.

Could go even further with this: maximize the the number of hands the dealer should win while also maximizing the number of hands the oppenent will likely think they should win to keep the pot big! Now I'm just getting crazy...

Maximize the "bad beat" factor... I like it :).

This seems impossible. There will always be hand combinations that hero would fold preflop, with the exception of the dealer in heads up fixed limit, less so NL. Even 3-handed with hero on the button (who should be correctly opening say 60% of his hands), it doesn't seem possible to stack the deck so that every hand combination will be opened.

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