I don't understand the expression "we block"

A2020

A2020

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I usually watch Poker streams on Twitch, and I hear a lot the expresion "we block" X hand.

I will explain with an example.

Player has JJ
Flop comes AKQ

and when player analyzes the hand, he says "we block JT"

I don't understand exactly what they mean with that. Like I would understand if they read that there are less Jacks in case opponent has a single Ten, but, regardless to chances of opponent having JT, aren't those exactly the same, no matter what we holding? At the start of the hand 4 jacks were on the deck, so the chances of opponent getting JT shouldn't be affected by us having JJ, right?

Hope I make clear my question here, and why I am confuse.
 
Gabinho12345

Gabinho12345

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No, when we have JJ, chances of opponent having JT are much smaller than they would be if we had QQ or any other hand that doesn't contain J or T.
 
vinnie

vinnie

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There are 16 combinations of JT (4 suited, 12 offsuit). But, when we hold J-J, we remove a bunch of those. There are on 2 suited combinations left. There are only 6 offsuit combinations left. Because we hold two of the jacks, the probability of someone having JT is cut in half. The fact that we know where some of the jacks are means that we know some of the combinations are impossible for the other player to hold.

The available combinations are based on the unknown cards.
 
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robcubus

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it reffers to the New Kids on the Block!! :p hehehehe have a nice day!
 
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tcummo

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Hand combinations? something else to learn....thanks Vinnie..
 
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TCashMoney19

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lol dammit Vinnie, you keep coming in to these posts and taking exactly what I want to say XD

But yeah, basically what Vinny said. When we hold two jacks in our hand, it significantly reduces the amount of combinations of JT in our opponents hand and thus we block the "nut" hand in your example of an AKQ flop, which is a premium hand to turn into a bluff in PLO and in NLHE against a thinking opponent. That's the point of "blockers" :)
 
TeUnit

TeUnit

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When you hold a card it removes the chance of your opponent having it and it lowers the chance that he has the same card of a different suit.
 
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Alphamuddle

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There are 16 combinations of JT (4 suited, 12 offsuit). But, when we hold J-J, we remove a bunch of those. There are on 2 suited combinations left. There are only 6 offsuit combinations left. Because we hold two of the jacks, the probability of someone having JT is cut in half. The fact that we know where some of the jacks are means that we know some of the combinations are impossible for the other player to hold.

The available combinations are based on the unknown cards.

Thank you a lot for that explanation! That makes sense. Like someone above said - another thing to learn for new players.
 
vinnie

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If you don't want to do the math by hand, there is a great tool at: http://www.propokertools.com/simulations that will show you how your hole cards changes the amount of combinations he can have of certain things.

You put in the card you know, put in a hand or range of hands that you want to explore, and click the "count" button.

Say you have :jh4::jd4: and the flop is :ah4::ks4::qd4:

We put that in the correct places. And then we put "jt" in the opponent's cards (no suits because we don't know them). When we click the count button, it will display the following.

ctNcKPq.png


The "Base Count" is how many they would have if we didn't know 5 of the cards. The "Optimized Count" is how many combinations they can hold, given what we do know. As you can see, the odds of them having JT are cut in half. One warning, you must enter the suits for the cards you know. If you just put "jj" for your cards, it won't remove them from the counts for the other player.

This can be really useful, if you assign someone a range pre-flop. Put the flop up, and then use the count to see how many combinations he started with. Then, figure out which ones they will call a bet with (from that range) and get the count for that. The difference is all the combinations that he's folding to a bet. It helps you estimate fold-equity and also can help you narrow down ranges on board progressions. That site does the hard work for you.

These aren't things you can do while at the table. But, it's worthwhile to look at a couple hands and play around with them after each session.
 
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