Starting hand percentage as a function of position and number of players

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nondescript

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I read a mathematical justification of the percentage of hands that you'd optimally start with as a function of the number of players in the game and your position, but I can't find it any more. Can someone help me with this? I understand that everything depends on the flow of the game and the opponents you are facing, but I'd like to know theoretically for arbitrary opponents whom you know nothing about how this percentage can be derived. Thanks a lot!

In case this matters, I'm asking for no limit hold em cash games.
 
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MinhANguyen

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Would you also like us to tell you how to solve poker? Jkjk.

There's no magic number or optimal % opening ranges. If your postflop skills are not that great, you need to play tighter pre. Likewise, if you are really good postflop you can wide your preflop range to gain some extra EV. I recommend playing tight until you hit at least 50NL and higher. You won't be able to profit much from playing LAG until you know how to play TAG, are experienced at hand reading, and experienced with many different postflop scenarios. Imo LAG is pretty fun and more interesting, but I switched back to TAG to lower variance.

What stakes are you playing? Also 6-max or 9-handed?
 
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nondescript

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Thanks for the reply. I understand what you are saying. A simple instance of what I'm looking for is what theoretically the percentage to start would be at UTG for n-player games. I play 6-max online and 9-max live. I play 25NL.

I was thinking it would relate to 1/n. Am I way off? I'd like to know what "tight" means mathematically I guess. Sorry for asking a stupid question. Didn't mean to try to ask for magic formulas and whatnot. I'd just want to get some reasoning for what I'm reading that I don't have right now. The book I'm reading just says some random percentages and I don't know where they come from. I guess I just want to find out how people come up with these numbers. Like if the game is heads up, it seems reasonable for players to start with 50% of hand UTG. But I can't generalize to n players.
 
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nondescript

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I think I found what I've read before. Let's say you are starting with a hand that is top x% of possible hands. Then if you are at an n player game and you are on position k, then the probability that you will have the best hand is:

(1-x)^(n-k+1)

Then you can solve for x so that (1-x)^(n-k+1)>50% for instance (you can change 50% depending on how skilled you are I guess?) to get your starting hand % for n players where you are in position k.

Does this make sense?
 
LD1977

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It is easier to have default ranges for typical games (6-max and full ring) than adjust every time there is a change. There really isn't much difference between 8 and 9 players.
 
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