2 hr. 50 min Look No Further
This time a more methodical approach worked.
Okay, but how realistic is it that someone who opens twice as often as another would have the same calling frequency? If someone is twice as aggressive, they will call less and raise more too, right?
I’m not saying that that’s a bad shove at all, but yea, that’s a suckout, the kind of thing that happens when one is aggressive.
KQ as a trend to win a hand? That’s like saying 7, 11, 17, 22, 35, 40, 44 has been winning the lottery quite a bit this year so I should play that ticket (in other words, baloney). Check-raising might be a trend, blockers might be a trend, but poker math has no ‘trends’. It’s math. The universe doesn’t suddenly say that 2+2=5 for the next few weeks.
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Personally, my heads up game needs work. My question is, how do stacks affect your openings? Would you still open 80% (or whatever %) regardless if stacks were relatively even, heavily in your favor, heavily against you? I mean I know that the smaller the stack the tighter the range until you get really small and then widen way up again (ICM), but how much variance might you suggest in your range in regards to stacks?
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KQ as a trend to win a hand?
Algorithms will repeat like a roulette wheel will have hot numbers.
Okay, we have a problem here. Let me explain.
Randomness is randomness. If you spot a trend, it’s a total fluke and it’s completely meaningless. If you flip a coin, the chances of seeing heads is 50%. If you flip it 10 times and you get 5 heads and 5 tails, the next flip is still 50% chance of heads. If you flip that coin 10 more times and get 10 heads in a row, the next flip is still 50% chance of heads. If you flip that coin another 10 times in a row and get 10 tails, the next flip is STILL 50% chance of heads.
What this means is that if KQ is beating AA for any length of time that is just random and the chances of KQ beating AA the next time that they square off is exactly the same as it ever was and ever will be. The trend is meaningless.
Honestly, I’m not trying to break your balls or anything but if you’re going to start touting math on a poker forum without a basic understanding of it, not only do you undermine all of your opinions, you also mislead others.
@napkin_holder we’ve all spent a lot of characters on this one with @Excaliburns 
Yeah for sure. This was a purely fictitious exercise to illustrate that aggression is very powerful HU.
As to stack size vs. open frequency, if I’m way ahead I will often tighten up as Villain is now more inclined to shove over my opens, and I can give them a few walks and still be in a position to win the match with 1 hand. Way behind I’ll open shove pretty much anything as I’m forked either way and my only hope is to steal some blinds to get back into contention. Idk if this is right lol it’s just what I do.
Level stacks = default strat
May 17 TH 2024
(Here’s an old post of mine that I’ll still stand by)
Regardless of how they are doing it, the fact that it’s certified means it passed a whole bunch of statistical tests that demonstrate it’s essentially indistinguishable from a true RNG.
Omaha Hi Lo - A Replay player can look at his cards and the flop thousands of times. Eventually, observing a pattern of winning hands.
It dawns on the player that the ability to solve cryptograms is useful here.
If the winner of the hand is already decided, then halfway through the hand a player can decipher by utilizing his crypto skills what comes next.
So, the two that will come on the river say, will compliment your A3 holding combo for the nut low.
If you see it happening over and over again, the way Replay sets up the winner of the hand,
it will become a pattern to anticipate.
Lately, just holding a KQ is a pattern they use for a boat winner. So, if you see a KQ on the flop, then a very high percentage of the time another K or Q hits.
Anticipate and bet accordingly.
That’s an example of, let’s call it “Algorithmic Crypto Play”
The crypto aspect can be as simple as noticing you would’ve won the hands every time you held an 8.
Just an 8 and either an 882 flop comes or some miracle way you win on the river.
So preflop, seeing an 8 in your hand and you bet big.
Your opponent probably will call you a donk, but you will win the hand.
Goatsoup asked me once after I beat him, " How do you win?"
We had a strong enough friendship where I felt comfortable enough to say, " I play against you "
I still laugh about it, but I am very good at solving cryptograms.
That would be a true answer to Goatsoup’s question long ago.
Remember, finding patterns in the cryptogram is the way to solve it.
So, finding patterns in the cards is the way to anticipate what’s coming next.
So, it is essentially indistinguishable from a true RNG after all.
The key word being “essentially”
Yet, there is a way for a player to have some advantage play by thinking differently.
Combine that with your solid poker play and you’ll win your share of Replay tournaments.
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@napkin_holder don’t do it! Think of the children! 
If you mean that you see a pattern in an opponent’s tendencies, well d’uh.
But Replay doesn’t set anything up. Also, you said trends in winning hands, comparing them to winning roulette numbers. No no no, this could not be more false. If you have learned this somewhere you have been badly misled. Again, I am not trying to embarrass you here in any way, but trying to tell you the truth about math, and if you choose not to listen then at least anyone else reading this will hear the truth.
AA beats KQ a certain percentage of the time. That is the percentage chance that AA will win any time that it faces KQ no matter how many times KQ has sucked it out in the last hour/day/week/month. It does not change.
KQ beats KJ a certain percentage of the time. That is the percentage chance that KQ will win any time that it faces KJ no matter how many times KJ has sucked it out in the last hour/day/week/month. It does not change.
44 beats 33 a certain percentage of the time. That is the percentage chance that 44 will win any time that it faces 33 no matter how many times 33 has sucked it out in the last hour/day/week/month. It does not change.
Pick any two hands that you want. Each pocket has a set percentage chance of beating each of the other pockets and these odds NEVER CHANGE.
As you mentioned roulette trends above. They are literally meaningless because every time that you spin the wheel these are the odds:
even: 9 out of 19
odd: 9 out of 19
red: 9 out of 19
black: 9 out of 19
low: 6 out of 19
med: 6 out of 19
high: 6 out of 19
any single number: 1 out of 38
any double: 1 out of 19
any quad: 2 out of 19
No matter now many times black comes up in the last hour/week/month/year/millennium the next spin the odds are STILL 9 out of 19.
What’s the payout? 2 to 1 or 9 out of 18. So if you play a million spins of roulette you will lose 1/19th of your money. If you play 100 spins and you’re up, it’s pure luck, no skill. Trends are meaningless.
Now, this is the last time that I will state this in this thread because it’s off topic. We can start another thread if you want. But the reason that this is important is because gambling is a major problem for many people. I have worked with vulnerable people and have seen gambling addictions that destroy families, and your ideas about math and games of chance are EXACTLY the types of mantras that gambling addicts use as excuses to keep believing that they can beat the house at games of chance. So I am compelled to emphatically state that these mantras ARE NOT TRUE in any way!
If you think you have a system to win roulette, you are fooling yourself. The same for craps, slots, keno, the lottery, any of that. There is no skill and no way to predict random chance. The house knows this. That’s why they always win. So, please do not try to win at games of chance thinking that you have a system. There is no system. The only way to win at games of chance is blind luck and the only way to consistently win at games of chance is to cheat.
Poker however combines chance with skill, so yes you can spot trends, but ONLY in the tendencies of the opponents, NEVER ever EVER in the cards themselves.
KQ is not beating AA or anything else any more than it ever has. For your own sake, if you are ever playing for real money please DO NOT believe otherwise.
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HANSEL is hot right now. KQ is NEVER hot right now.
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Roulette wheels are different because it’s a physical "R"NG so there’s always going to be an objective deviation from the statistically expected distribution, unless the wheel is perfectly balanced which is unlikely/functionally impossible. People have indeed made money tracking large samples of data from a given wheel and betting accordingly; trick is you must be sure the house hasn’t done maintenance since you measured lol
I am fond of telling people that for similar reasons, if anything online poker would be MORE ‘random’ than brick and mortar cardhouse deals, where the deck is often insufficiently shuffled to avoid having a deterministic relationship to the previous deal.
The fact is I continue to win, to this very day on Replay.
Replay is a free site and no money is required.
The smart ones enjoy Replay Poker and stay away from casinos.
You have a good heart getting the word out.
I have no problem at all with your mathematical posts.
All my past comments were about Replay’s algorithm.
The system wouldn’t apply elsewhere so there’s some needless worry there.
Also, Replay Poker, in its entirety, has always been considered entertainment.
No need to start another algorithm thread.
The topic has been thoroughly covered for years on Replay Poker.
So, I understand where you’re coming from and thank you for posting!
“But Replay doesn’t set anything up.” - napkin_holder - Player Since: Oct, 2024
Back in March 2020, I joined Replay Poker.
Back then, I immediately noticed a repeating winning hand.
It was so prevalent; it was standing out like the sun in the sky.
The hand that was being dealt was 3-6
However, it was only a winning hand when a 4 and a 5 were in the flop.
The turn didn’t matter, it was always a card other than a 2.
The river 2 was there enough times to expect it.
That algorithm rivered the 2 again and again
Replay did make a change later that year and that particular hand hasn’t repeated once
in that way again.
You are talking like someone who lacks a basic understanding of probability and statistics.
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What happened back then was equivalent to a roulette wheel hitting 32
50 times in a row with no end in sight.
I highly doubt that, but I get you’re being hyperbolic. Maybe there was something wrong with the RNG in the past; I doubt it, but I wasn’t active or paying attention to such things at the time, so I can’t refute your claim.
What I do know is I have played a quarter million hands this year and nothing like what you’re talking about seems remotely evident. This makes sense, as there would have to be something seriously wrong with the RNG for such observable, exploitable patterns to exist.
I think you’re looking at arbitrary chunks of long-tail outliers and drawing similarly arbitrary conclusions, seemingly supported by your selective memory and anecdotal coincidence.
Frankly, as skilled a player as you are, if you had the added edge of observing exploitable RNG patterns that other players aren’t seeing, you’d surely have a lot more chips by now 
Random Number Generators (RNGs) are designed to ensure fairness and unpredictability in online poker games. However, even the best RNGs can sometimes exhibit patterns that might seem like certain hands win in cycles. This can be due to several factors:
- Pseudo-Randomness: Most online poker sites use pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs), which rely on algorithms to produce sequences of numbers that appear random. These algorithms use a seed value, which can be influenced by various factors like system time or user inputs. While PRNGs are designed to be as random as possible, they are not truly random and can sometimes produce patterns.
- Algorithmic Imperfections: If the PRNG algorithm is not well-designed, it might produce sequences that are not uniformly random. This can lead to certain hands appearing more frequently than others.
- Perception of Patterns: Human brains are wired to recognize patterns, even where none exist. This cognitive bias can make players believe that certain hands are winning more often than they should.
- Selective Memory: Players tend to remember unusual or significant events, like a specific hand winning multiple times, and forget the more common, less notable outcomes.
- Statistical Anomalies: In any large set of random data, there will be clusters and streaks that appear to form patterns. This is a natural part of randomness and does not indicate any flaw in the RNG.
In summary, while RNGs are designed to ensure fairness, the combination of pseudo-randomness, algorithmic imperfections, and human perception can sometimes create the illusion of patterns in the outcomes of poker hands.
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This rules out 1 and 2.
I have read deep into both tRNGs, PRNGs and one thing is always true.
There are algorithms to produce pseudo-random values from within an ideal, deterministic computing environment. However, there is no algorithm to produce unpredictable random numbers without some sort of additional non-deterministic input.