5-Card Draw pat hand frequency and snowing

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I looked in my pokerhands database to find how often a player played a pat hand.

There are 19776 hands higher than the rank of AAAxx which are "true" pat candidates. People do stand pat with less -- two pair often -- which seems to me counter-productive. People will occasionally break a full house to generate more action. I've not done this myself yet. Seems like a total waste of a full house, and I'd feel like a complete fool if villain fills his flush draw.

So 0.76% of all hands that are "true" pat hands

How often a player pat varies widely.
I only looked at players on whom I had at least 100 hands.
Some play a pat hand as much as 4% of the time, and others surprisingly enough, almost never.

For example one winning player has patted only once in 425 hands, yet has a BB/100 of 2.4

I've based some action at the table based on simple observation:
If a player has patted more than once per hundred, I'll look them up.

How big a sample size would be needed before you could use this data to make decisions?

One other thing I wanted to use this data for:
How often could you snow and "get away with it"?

Currently I try to snow once per hundred hands.
This should (over time) give me reasonably risk-free extra few BB

I try to snow in less-than-obvious spots.
For example, I'm not likely to snow from the BB if the pot was re-raised before me. Too much chance of another pat hand, and too much chance someone will look me up because the dead money just a BB away after the draw.

Finally, I've read that your first pat hand should be a snow.
I'm going the other way for now.
My first pat hand gets looked up too often -- especially when it is v early in the session.

I think I would rather show them a good pat hand (or two) then try to slip in a snow.

Thoughts?

To get good stats on something that happens very infrequently, you're going to need a lot of hands. For example, if something happens 1% of the time and you have 100 samples, roughly half the time it won't happen and half the time it will. Just think what that looks like in your HUD. You need thousands of hands to get an accurate stat.

If you snow once every 100 hands, you're snowing more than you're value betting. Considering this is fixed limit, the GTO bluffing frequency is probably about one snow for every three or four pats with a real hand. That doesn't mean that snowing more often isn't a good idea, but you need to be aware that you are playing to exploit your opponents' tendency to fold too often if you do this.

If your first pat gets looked up too often with AAxxx or worse, do it with a crappy two pair first time. The GTO response to somebody patting is to bluffcatch with the top of your folding range, which would be high trips. If you see someone doing this you can be sure that their either a good player or an idiot who doesn't like to fold trips. Try typing 'You're an idiot' into chat and see how they respond. If they say 'I knew you were bluffing', they are the latter, if they ignore you, probably the former.

You need thousands of hands to get an accurate stat.

I have several players w/ over 1K hands
All but one are solid winning players, and all have pat frequencies around what one would expect ~0.7%

They person that has given me the most trouble out of the bunch also plays higher limits, and I suspected he is bluffing out of the blinds, so I've been calling some, and raising others with good results.

His pat frequency over 4K hands is 0.98%, so I may look for opportunities there, as well.

the GTO bluffing frequency is probably about one snow for every three or four pats with a real hand. That doesn't mean that snowing more often isn't a good idea, but you need to be aware that you are playing to exploit your opponents' tendency to fold too often if you do this.

I'll try to see what this looks like -- I don't like snowing from EP.
When I do snow, I like to snow over a CO or earler raiser (+/- a caller) -- almost a squeeze.
I currently have been snowing with lousy straight draws.

If your first pat gets looked up too often with AAxxx or worse, do it with a crappy two pair first time. The GTO response to somebody patting is to bluffcatch with the top of your folding range, which would be high trips. If you see someone doing this you can be sure that their either a good player or an idiot who doesn't like to fold trips. Try typing 'You're an idiot' into chat and see how they respond. If they say 'I knew you were bluffing', they are the latter, if they ignore you, probably the former.

I don't really need that to tell who the good players are.
They're the ones on my left ♦

But you're right -- when I do get looked up, it is almost always by someone w/ trips.

In one of the NL tournaments, I even looked up a pat hand holding only AA -- and he had like 9-high or smth.

Thanks for the comments!

If u are playing low and mid Fixed Limit 5CD games my opinion is to reduce all kinda bluffs.
The only reasonable purpose of bluffing in FL is balancing.
You dont have to balance against fish, so only value betting is good there.
And ofc. it is another story if u play PL 5CD

Don't forget about situations when you raise pat hand and everyone folds. So real fq in your stats without any bluffs should be lower than 0,76%.

Originally posted by Anykey444
Don't forget about situations when you raise pat hand and everyone folds. So real fq in your stats without any bluffs should be lower than 0,76%.

My own frequency after about 50K hands was 0.68 -- and I never snowed.
I snow a bit more now, and I'm up to 0.70

People don't pat quads, too, so that lowers the expected frequency a bit.

I have a query that reads from the pokerhands database, and returns the pat frequency for each player currently sitting at a table with me.

The data displays in Excel.

The query counts times that a player saw the draw and drew 0.

It is interesting information, but I almost never base any decisions on the data, so it is mostly just a curiosity.

I did today, though.
I called a pat hand where villain 3Bet from BB.
His pat frequency at that point was over 2, so I called w/ AA just to see.
Total air -- I THINK he had Q-high

Best of luck.
--VS

Some damned good stuff in here. We like.

How do you find pat hands and how much someone draws from PokerHand database?

In general I agree with u1ker and I only rarely pat bluff when I'm in position and can't win the pot otherwise.

Originally posted by jon011
How do you find pat hands and how much someone draws from PokerHand database?

In general I agree with u1ker and I only rarely pat bluff when I'm in position and can't win the pot otherwise.

I wrote a query that extracts the data directly from the database -- it displays its data in Excel.

I agree about the bluffs to a point.
You cannot bluff someone that isn't going to fold, but at $0.10/$0.20 FL 5-Card Draw on Stars, they fold a LOT when they shouldn't.

For example, if SB open limps, Raise from BB and draw 1. If SB checks bet.
They fold often enough. Don't do it every time of course.
Against the right player, you can do this even if they raise.
Note that I v rarely do this with complete air -- I prefer flush draws and oesds. If I'm not B v B then I don't bluff straight draws at all, and only nut flush draws. I'll otherwise play draws if I have pot odds to do so.

Besides the one pot -- win or lose -- you now make them suspicious, and your 2-pair and trips get paid off more.

There is a book coming out written by PokerStrategy member jbpatzer, and coaches TwiceT and EmanuelC , called "The Education of a Modern Poker Player" that has quite a good section of 5-Card Draw.

Best of luck,
--VS

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

There is a book coming out written by PokerStrategy member jbpatzer, and coaches TwiceT and EmanuelC , called "The Education of a Modern Poker Player" that has quite a good section of 5-Card Draw.

That's nice! I don't think there has ever been any writings about 5 card draw after Super System and Ankeny's 'Winning With Game Theory'. Of course a mini-book could be compiled with EvGalois notes.

Can you check from query how often your pat hand has been raised after the draw? What's your general calling and re-raising range in that spot?

I believe that drawing 3 and raising against pat hands could be a good second level bluff sometimes against decent players. Because noone really expects you to have less than a full house or quads. Though drawing these hands is about 1% and someone folding their real pat hand is probably the same percentage in micro stakes. So lot of rare things have to happen for this to succeed.

Other interesting fact is having a pat hand in a 3 or 4-way pot which has been capped pre-draw. I don't think anyone feels very confident with his 76543 straight there. Then your trips or strong two-pair could be turned into a bluff. Problem is that the pot is too big to fold any kind of pat hand in that spot even after a raise, because you only have to be correct once out of ten times. In my experience it's actually close. People tend to always have it there, so it makes it easier to fold your weak pat hand.

Finally I think that pat hands make a very little part of the game overall and playing them straight-forward guarantees the biggest EV.

You just have profit doing "Stand Pat's" in 5 Card Draw PL. In the Fixed Limit there are all kinds of fishers that call with nothing and you get mad.
In Fixed-Limit just value bet and the profit is almost all done.

My question:

Where do you see all that statistics?

Originally posted by jon011
Can you check from query how often your pat hand has been raised after the draw? What's your general calling and re-raising range in that spot?

I could write such a query, but it would take a while to run -- it is not something I would want to try in real time.

Even the pat hand frequency query takes 7 - 15 seconds to run with only two tables running. ( I have an 8-yr old XP computer).

Originally posted by jon011
I believe that drawing 3 and raising against pat hands could be a good second level bluff sometimes against decent players. Because noone really expects you to have less than a full house or quads. Though drawing these hands is about 1% and someone folding their real pat hand is probably the same percentage in micro stakes. So lot of rare things have to happen for this to succeed.

I've never tried to bluff vs a pat hand, though I have caught some bluff pats.
I have had lots of pats called -- especially now that I snow periodically.

When I do call pats, it is only w/ high trips or better.

--VS

For me, there are some common spots to systemically pat bluff; e.g.,

1) BB vs SB limp; at $2-4, one would like 19092/2.88 ~ 6629.166667 pat bluffing combinations ( ignoring the card removal effects that would make the higher ranked cards more frequent ), so I simply pick any pat 2-7 lowball hand which is #11 to #1 which doesn't include either a flush draw or openended straight draw. The exception I exclude is the #11 hand 87532 when there are three of one suit and two of another; with this specific combination, I don't pat bluff. Then, there are 6600 pat bluffing combinations. It turns out you don't have to exclude those at the micros because of the higher rake, and at $10-20 you would exclude some more combinations.

2) BTN vs blinds; again, at $2-4, one would like 19092/3.85 ~ 4958.961039 pat bluffing combinations, so the range I use when both blinds call and draw cards is any hand without a pair, flush draw, openended straight draw or AK to draw to. The following hand types get to 4800 combinations:

AQJT8, AQJ98, AQT98, KQJ98, KQT98.

Then, I also include AKQJ9 with specifically 2-1-1-1 suit distribution without a suited ace. That works out to 4944 combinations.

3) I wrote a post on another site awhile back concerning pat bluffing when in the BB HU against an open limper. For example, against an hijack open limp, you simply choose KQJxy hands with 2-1-1-1 suit distribution without KQ suited to get to roughly the optimal number of pat bluffing combinations ( the ideal number for FL $2-4 draw is ~ 6114.331465, but there are only 6048 pat bluffing combinations ).

Of course, all this is simply worked out in advance before playing; then simply make adjustments according to the opponents: e.g., if they call down pat hands frequently, cut back a big portion of your pat bluffing range.

There are some spots to 3-bet and pat bluff which seem effective too, and even though I've used the hand AT965 with specifically 2-1-1-1 suit distribution, it's not clear that I should continue to use this specific hand; of course, this hand has virtually no drawing value but it nicely blocks some straight and flush possibilities. Having that ace also avoids being looked up by AA or aces up.

BTW, I think I would call down a player with trips pretty routinely except maybe when I have specifically drawn two cards; however, many of the hand-types that I use for pat bluffing tend to reduce that possibility of being looked up by trips. Against players that are trying to exploit you or even bluffing close to optimally, the game theoretic calling range is actually quite wide; thus, there are opportunities to exploit specific types of opponents ( esp. those that "autofold" when you pat! ).

Actually, the four hand-types that seem to work for pat bluffing when pat versus pat are: AKQJ(9/8) and AKQT(9/8) with precisely 2-1-1-1 suit distribution. If the other player is legitimately pat, it's not unlikely the other hand is 87654/ 76543/ 65432. Of course, those aforementioned hands are rare, and I suppose some players might want to add some pat wheel combinations to pat bluff with.

In the SB versus BB, this is the range I think will work well for pat bluffing if the BB doesn't reraise:

The following combinations without the top two cards suited:

KQJ98, KQJ97, KQJ87, KQT98, KQT97,KQT87, KQ987 ( but not 3-2 suit distribution ), KJT97, KJT87 ( but not 3-2 suit distribution ).