Jolt Country

This sounds too difficult and I would lose all my money because of all the confusing rounders lingo. Can you play blackjack instead?

If I had to vote I would say five possible hands could beat your four of a kind, but that's merely a guess


THE
REAL
BLIND
AARDVARK

Which five are you thinking?

Er...

Oh that five.

Okay, let's put this baby to bed!

Amusingly, the only one who selected the right answer is the one who admitted having no idea what the hell they were talking about or looking at. Congratulations Aardvark for selecting the correct answer: 5!

Here are the five hands that could potentially beat my four Kings:

Straight flush: A K Q J 10 of Hearts
Straight flush: K Q J 10 9 of Hearts
Straight flush: A K Q J 10 of Diamonds
Straight flush: K Q J 10 9 of Diamonds
Four aces.

I originally though the answer was seven including the two club straight-flushes, but then it was pointed out to me that since I was also holding the 10 of clubs, those would be impossible.

So, five. There ya go.

Now, here's how the hand played out:

I check, because a virtually unbeatable hand, you're just slow-playing hoping the rest of the table goes nuts. Which they immediately did, as the guy to my left led out with 300. Now, realize that this was in fact the very first hand of the game, and on PokerNow, you start with 1000 chips. So he's putting out 3/10s of his stack right away.

The idea is, you're assuming nobody has the fourth King, so you're playing/betting assuming that you're not trying to beat quads, and everyone has three Kings. I am guessing he had a small pocket pair, giving him a full house, which would probably have been unbeatable.

The second guy calls the 300, possibly for the same reason, or he had an ace, and three kings and an ace would beat three kings and some lower card.

The turn comes out: a Jack.

I check again, and everyone slows down and checks it around.

The river comes: ANOTHER JACK.

So the board is showing a full house - Kings full of Jacks. Obviously this is probably the best hand anyone has. That's when I make my move: I go all in.

This is something of a "gag bet". Like, "ha ha, we all have the best hand, but I'll bet it anyway". Here's the thing, though, they have to assume that it's a gag bet. You're not gonna fold your Kings full of Jacks. Nothing's likely to beat that, unless someone has the other King, but that's ridiculous.

They both call. That means that on the first hand, we've all bet our entire stack of 1000 chips.

Hilarity ensues, as I turn over the King and knock both of them out on the very first hand of the game.

Four Kings is a good hand.

I did the same thing as Pinback and guessed seven, forgetting about the 10 you were holding. The actual winning odds when compared to five vs. seven hands that could beat you are so miniscule that it doesn't really matter, but there ya go. It would have been heart-breaking (for them) if any of the other players had been holding a Jack. Seeing a J on the turn, you know they would have been just waiting to go all on on the river... and then to see another Jack turn over and know that 10 seconds ago you had an almost unbeatable hand and now you are sharing it with everyone... that would have majorly sucked.

I'm amazed by the guys on television who can do all those odds in their heads in reali time. At the table I could have told you four Kings was a pretty unbeatable hand, but I wouldn't have come up with the exact odds for a while.

Back in my day (and probably still today), some cards rooms would offer a "bad beat jackpot". The rules were, if you had an aces-full or better hand beaten, you would win a big chunk of the jackpot (often about $10,000), the "winner" would get a smaller chunk, and everyone in the hand at the table would get a little bit out of it.

The kicker, though, is that "both cards must play" in the hand. If my K-10 was beaten by one of the five hands that could, I would not have won the jackpot because there is no way the 10 could have played, since there would have to be a higher card on the board to fill out my five-card hand.

That would have sucked.

Hey, I said 5 and listed the same hands as you just did.

Yeah but you didn't vote for it. AARDVARK WINS, that's the end of it.

Late to this thread. The question is moot. In poker, you don't play the cards, you play the man.

Hilarity ensues, as I turn over the King and knock both of them out on the very first hand of the game.

Are they allowed to hang around for one more hand to screech obscenities and draw dicks on the screen?

Obscenities, yes. Dicks I believe are scheduled for early 2021.

I WON A MAJOR AWARD!
(fra-gile-lay!)

I read the part about playing the ten and splitting up the jackpot. I read it three or four times and don't understand it. Like Rain Man, maybe poker isn't my game.

THE
FIFTEEN MINUTES TO
WAPNER
AARDVARK

Let's take a hypothetical, that I was beaten by a royal flush in hearts:

The board (the five cards in the middle) would have had to look something like this (c=clubs, h=hearts, s=spades, d=diamonds):

Kc Kh Kd Qh Jh

I have Ks Tc.
My enemy would have Ah Th. ("T" = 10)

So "Ah Th" has a royal flush in hearts, beating my four Kings.

Now, you're comparing best five-card hands. In my case, my best five card hand is the four kings, plus the Qh in the middle, because it's the highest of the cards available. The other ten in my hand does not "play", because it is not a part of my best five-card hand.

So his best five-card hand is, naturally, the royal flush: Ah Kh Qh Jh Th
My best five-card hand is: Kc Kh Kd Kc Qh

The ten of clubs in my hand is as useless as a teat on a frog, and thus, I do not get my "bad beat jackpot" of ten grand. So I've lost the hand of my life, I'm out all the money I bet on it, and I don't even get the pity fuck from the cardroom. My life is shit. I head to the bar to drown my sorrows in straight whiskey, but nothing can console me, so I go into the alley in the back of the Monte Carlo between the bingo hall and the parking lot and blow my brains out with a .22 pistol.

Thankfully, in this instance, I pulled out the win.

pinback wrote: Mon Dec 07, 2020 12:44 pm Yeah but you didn't vote for it.

I did.

I had written an article here and as I was switching windows between this window and the spreadsheet I accidentally clicked on the kill button (top right red X) destroying this window and my answer.

After thinking this logically, I came to the conclusion I was wrong, I was thinking only 4 aces would beat his hand, but it is possible to get a straight flush or a royal flush. So let's count:
1. Royal flush of 10 J K Q A Clubs
2. Royal flush of 10 J K Q A Heart
3. Royal flush of 10 J K Q A Diamond
4. Straight flush of 9 10 J Q K Clubs
5. Straight flush of 9 10 J Q K Heart
6. Straight flush of 9 10 J Q K Diamond
7. Four aces, 2 in hand, 2 in river.

For all of the royals there are six combinations
10 J / River: Q K A
10 Q / J Q K
10 A / J Q K
j Q / 10 K A
J A / 10 Q K
Q A / 10 J K

For all of the straights there are 6 combinations:
9 10 / River: J Q K
9 J / 10 Q K
9 Q / 10 j K
10 j / 9 Q K
10 Q / 9 J K
J Q / 9 10 K

For Four aces there are 6 Combinations
C D / H S
C H / D S
C S / D H
D H / C S
D S / C H
H S / D C

There are 42 possible winning hands.

But the number of possible hands in a 4-player game is a very large number 52 * 51 * 47*46 * 45*44 * 43*42 *41*40*39*38*37 (1,843,766,506,260,449,971,200; 1.84E+21). For this game, to win requires that a player must get 4 of the remaining cards (2 for them, two more in the river, either current river card being the two new cards and one of the kings (for a flush), or two aces with two in river (for four of a kind) .

In this current situation, there are 46*45*44*43*42*41 (6,744,109,680) possible hands of which only 42 are winning hands, odds being 6.22765672458636526801E-9.

The odds of getting the right combination for the second player require getting one of 24 on the first card 24/50 (0.48)* 3/49 (0.0612244898) on the second, * river, the third player getting 24/48 (0.5) * 3/47 (0.0638297872) * river, the fourth being 24/46 (0.5217391304) * 3/45 (0.0666666667) * river, river being 2/44 (0.04545454545454545454545) * 1/43 (0.02325581395348837209302) totalling (0.001057082452431289640592).

In short, the odds of anyone else winning are about the odds of being struck by lightning.

I was wrong in that I misread your 10 as a 10 of spades rather than 10 of clubs. This makes the chance of someone else beating you even worse, as there are not 42 hands that can beat yours, but only 30.

Yeah, but what were the chances I'd play it so well?