Tournament Hole Card Distribution (176 hands)

D

Dark Army

Enthusiast
Silver Level
Joined
Dec 27, 2018
Total posts
99
Chips
0
I played 176 hands today in a tournament before I busted out.

During the tournament, I noticed that I was being dealt what seemed to be an obnoxious number of 2's and 3's.

So at the end of the tournament, I manually put my entire hand history into an excel spreadsheet and had it calculate the total dealt of each card (regardless of suit) and their percentage dealt within the 176 hands.

Here are the results:

2's = 32 (18.18%)
3's = 33 (18.75%)
4's = 24 (13.64%)
5's = 28 (15.91%)
6's = 29 (16.48%)
7's = 24 (13.64%)
8's = 27 (15.34%)
9's = 24 (13.64%)
10's = 27 (15.34%)
J's = 19 (10.80%)
Q's = 26 (14.77%)
K's = 27 (15.34%)
A's = 32 (18.18%)

As you can see, my deals leaned towards 2's, 3's and A's by quite a bit where the average is 27.

48.30% of my cards were below an 8
44.30% of my cards were above an 8

33.24% of my hands contained 2's, 3's, 4's and 5's.
29.55% of my hands contained J's, Q's, K's and A's

24.15% of my hands contained 3's, 4's and 5's
20.45% of my hands contained J's, Q's and K's

Considering that you will get dealt AA once every 221 hands on the average, I was dealt AA an unusual number of times = 4 times

Of the remaining 24 aces I was dealt, 8 of them contained a 2 or 3 (33.33%)

AK - 1 time
AQ - 2 times
AJ - 0 times
A10 - 3 times
A9 - 0 times
A8 - 6 times!
A7 - 2 times
A6 - 1 time
A5 - 0 times
A4 - 1 time
A3 - 4 times
A2 - 4 times

KK - 0 times
QQ - two times
JJ - 0 times


Of the 19 J's I was dealt, 7 of them contained a 10 or higher (36.8%) vs (63.2%)
Of the 26 Q's I was dealt, 10 of them contained a 10 or higher (38.4%) vs (61.6%)
Of the 27 K's I was dealt, 8 of them contained a 10 or higher (29.6%) vs (70.4%)

I never achieved a straight or a flush.

I suppose it could be argued that all of this is within a normal range, but it sure doesn't feel like it.
 
Last edited:
W

whosdaboss25

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Jan 12, 2019
Total posts
197
Chips
0
What place did you come in and did you make the money cut if it was a buy-in tourney or a freeroll?
 
K

kkonicke

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Jan 26, 2019
Total posts
416
Chips
1
I don't think these results are all that unusual, sample size isn't overly large in just 176 hands. If you were talking about 10000 hands, I'm sure every card would be within a couple percent of each other.
 
VIP_TARIFF

VIP_TARIFF

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Sep 28, 2018
Total posts
450
Chips
0
Poker is not 100 hands. The return on poker can be obtained only at a distance. Poker is not a game of allies, but a game of skill. Good luck to you at the tables dear friend.
 
5

5KINGLEO5

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Apr 29, 2020
Total posts
353
Chips
0
176 hands is a small sample, according to my observations AA gives me 1 time per 120 hands. Mostly small cards or weak aces are dropped. I think the more we play, the more chances we get to get good cards and win the tournament.
 
I

ios

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Apr 16, 2020
Total posts
165
Awards
1
PL
Chips
63
176 hands is not enough to make reliable statistic. You never got equal distribution of every card, I wouldn't worry about it. More interesting is, getting AA 4 times. But still, I'd bet it fits into standard deviation.
 
M

Mr_RichRich

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Feb 8, 2018
Total posts
142
Chips
0
i would like to know at which room you where playing , coz it justifies a lot .
and i suggest for next time to make it 1000 hand calculation.. for better analysis and more realistic result.
 
D

DS3

Legend
Loyaler
Joined
Sep 9, 2019
Total posts
7,519
Awards
1
GB
Chips
215
Dark Army-

Thanks for taking the time to present the hands. It makes for some interesting reading.

It is easy (it always is) for someone to state 'small sample size' and there is little to argue otherwise. But...it is interesting to see how hands have subtle weighting in terms of less playable combinations. I often feel I can sense where a session (and by session I mean an MTT as that is what I play almost exclusively) is heading from the first orbit of hands.

Further to that I have noticed a distinct difference in the quality of hands I receive across the three main sites I play. Two seem fairly balanced with card distribution (good and bad runs) but one delivers crushingly mediocre hands with depressing regularity. So much so that I have had periods where I stopped playing entirely.

As I frequently point out, I am relatively new to poker, graduated from play money into free rolls and have no axe to grind in terms of losing bankrolls (I have established bankrolls on four sites from nothing). But I have recognized patterns and like you monitored results which were questionable and found I was correct (cue 'small sample size' argument).

That's fine with me. However one thing that causes me to hesitate playing micro stakes is the mediocrity of hands I receive on one key site with such frequency. I not only find it dispiriting I pose if this happened in micro stakes I would be struggling against the algorithm as much as other players.

As noted, the easy retort is 'small sample size' to dismiss such questions and observations but I value them as beneficial. If nothing else you can look at a session and confirm you received mediocre hands for that specific MTT and chill somewhat regarding a frustrating session.

Once again, appreciate the time and effort to post the breakdown.
 
E

ejsch

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
Jul 26, 2018
Total posts
106
Chips
0
2 and 3

i noticed in one site i play in if im not getting cards i make a comment and it changes. make you wonder.
 
C

chaplain

Rising Star
Bronze Level
Joined
Sep 18, 2018
Total posts
7
Chips
0
ejsch said:
i noticed in one site i play in if im not getting cards i make a comment and it changes. make you wonder.
Click to expand...
I've heard people say PS is rigged....but now it can see into your thought process? That's why the idiots win....they don't think anyway!🤣 [emoji33]
 
C

chaplain

Rising Star
Bronze Level
Joined
Sep 18, 2018
Total posts
7
Chips
0
Dark Army said:
I played 176 hands today in a tournament before I busted out.

During the tournament, I noticed that I was being dealt what seemed to be an obnoxious number of 2's and 3's.

So at the end of the tournament, I manually put my entire hand history into an excel spreadsheet and had it calculate the total dealt of each card (regardless of suit) and their percentage dealt within the 176 hands.

Here are the results:

2's = 32 (18.18%)
3's = 33 (18.75%)
4's = 24 (13.64%)
5's = 28 (15.91%)
6's = 29 (16.48%)
7's = 24 (13.64%)
8's = 27 (15.34%)
9's = 24 (13.64%)
10's = 27 (15.34%)
J's = 19 (10.80%)
Q's = 26 (14.77%)
K's = 27 (15.34%)
A's = 32 (18.18%)

As you can see, my deals leaned towards 2's, 3's and A's by quite a bit where the average is 27.

48.30% of my cards were below an 8
44.30% of my cards were above an 8

33.24% of my hands contained 2's, 3's, 4's and 5's.
29.55% of my hands contained J's, Q's, K's and A's

24.15% of my hands contained 3's, 4's and 5's
20.45% of my hands contained J's, Q's and K's

Considering that you will get dealt AA once every 221 hands on the average, I was dealt AA an unusual number of times = 4 times

Of the remaining 24 aces I was dealt, 8 of them contained a 2 or 3 (33.33%)

AK - 1 time
AQ - 2 times
AJ - 0 times
A10 - 3 times
A9 - 0 times
A8 - 6 times!
A7 - 2 times
A6 - 1 time
A5 - 0 times
A4 - 1 time
A3 - 4 times
A2 - 4 times

KK - 0 times
QQ - two times
JJ - 0 times


Of the 19 J's I was dealt, 7 of them contained a 10 or higher (36.8%) vs (63.2%)
Of the 26 Q's I was dealt, 10 of them contained a 10 or higher (38.4%) vs (61.6%)
Of the 27 K's I was dealt, 8 of them contained a 10 or higher (29.6%) vs (70.4%)

I never achieved a straight or a flush.

I suppose it could be argued that all of this is within a normal range, but it sure doesn't feel like it.
Click to expand...
It all looks pretty standard to me. There's not much between the percentages of all dealt combinations.
I do think that online players think the site is out to get them, which I always find bewildering! It's obvious they've never sat in live tournaments four / five times a week every week, all year and had long periods where you feel you've had nothing but 95 27 104 for about a month! It's demoralising and makes for some miserable games, but it happens to everybody.

And then you'll sit down at three tourneys in a row and get KK AA AK so many times you have to be careful with how you're being perceived at the table with your never ending stream of 3 bets!

But generally you'll have good games and bad games and lots and lots of games with a bit of everything.

It's called the law of averages.

Like lots of live players I'm playing online because of lockdown and I can assure you that the best thing you can say about any hand in poker, wherever you play, is that it's a 'normal' hand in poker.

Keep patient.
 
M

moshie

Rock Star
Silver Level
Joined
May 9, 2020
Total posts
142
Chips
0
I sat through times when I could not get a playable hand through 30-40 hands often. I find one Like AJ offsuit by the time it gets to me the pot is already 3 bet. In the muck
it goes. I end up going back to the cycle of waiting again.
 
Roller

Roller

Legend
Platinum Level
Joined
Mar 14, 2009
Total posts
2,157
Awards
4
US
Chips
187
With variance considerations one must have a very large sample size to determine if things seem to be biased in one direction or another. The larger the sample size the clearer the true picture becomes. The fact that you are looking at the numbers so close is a fantastic sign that you are dedicated to improving your game.
 
F

Fjarri

Enthusiast
Silver Level
Joined
May 21, 2020
Total posts
26
Chips
0
I'll have a look at your starting cards.

There is an easy way to test how close this is to a uniform distribution, which is what we expect from our cards. That is, we want the probability of getting each card to be the same as any other card. This is called the chi-squared test: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearson's_chi-squared_test

Our chi-squared statistic is around 6.75

Our critical value for a 90% significance level is around 18.55

Since 6.75 < 18.55, we conclude that there is no reason to reject that these starting cards conform to a uniform distribution. Nothing fishy going on here.

The same can be said (and confirmed, but with some fancier calculations) about your other data. Everything is well within the range of reasonable variance.
 
Starting Hands - Poker Hand Nicknames Rankings - Poker Hands
Top