Board Game Arena

I've been going allin every hand to see whether the cards are dealt properly or not. Then I see I won 2 out of 20 hands that I went allin. Even bad hands should win 30% of the time, and sometimes I am even ahead and lose. What a scam.

Then we see in your profile that you won 5 games out of 20, pretty close to 30% isn't it?

Sometimes people were folding after you all-in (saw only once in three games so maybe it's rare), and so that make theirs hands better and yours worst, which make it harder for you to win.

And 20 games with close probabilities like here tell absolutely nothing.

I am quite sure that you are not counting correctly.

If you go all in with every card then in approx. 90% of all cases your opponents will fold. I.e., you win at least 90% of all hands without a showdown.

In the other 10% that your opponents call your All In they will usually have a better hand. It is well plausible that you lose 90% of those hands.

In total you win approx. 90+10*0.1 =91% of all hands. Of course your tactic of always going All In will lose you almost all matches because this strategy is inferior.

euklid314 wrote: ↑26 September 2024, 17:36 If you go all in with every card then in approx. 90% of all cases your opponents will fold. I.e., you win at least 90% of all hands without a showdown.

In the other 10% that your opponents call your All In they will usually have a better hand. It is well plausible that you lose 90% of those hands.

I disagree with these probability estimates. I'm not sure if we're talking about a multi-player game or heads-up, but either way, if you go all-in with every hand then your opponent(s) will realize soon what you are doing. You will likely have a caller in more than 10% of cases. If it's a multiplayer game with five or more opponents, who understand that you are going all-in every hand, then you should get at least one caller on around 50% of hands. (Also, it's unclear, are we saying that you go all-in even if someone else has gone all-in before you? Or is it just that you go all-in preflop every time nobody else has voluntarily entered the pot. I assume the latter.)

You say it is plausible that if you get called you have a 90% chance of losing, but that is not plausible at all! If you go all-in preflop with 9-4 and are called by A-Q then you have only a 67% chance of losing. Even if your 9-4 is called by A-A, your chance of losing is less than 90%. And keep in mind, that if your opponent sees you going all-in with every hand, then your opponent probably won't be so selective, and frequently you will have the better hand preflop. For example, you might go all-in with A-7 and be called by K-Q.

In total you win approx. 90+10*0.1 =91% of all hands. Of course your tactic of always going All In will lose you almost all matches because this strategy is inferior.

It is not true that this tactic will lose "almost all" matches. In a two-player no-limit holdem freezeout match, going all-in every hand (even if your opponent has gone all-in before you) will give you a probability of maybe 30% to 40% to win the match. Some people consider this a flaw in the game of no-limit holdem: that such a simple strategy can give you a one-third chance of winning the match even against a very good player. If the game were pot-limit holdem, then the "always raise the max preflop" strategy would be less effective (depending on the blind structure).

Thank you for your analysis. I oversimplified, you are absolutely right.

I only looked at a single game of OP. It was a 4-player game, very first hand of the match:
The first player raises preflop, the 2nd player (=OP) goes all in with 3,4 offsuit, then small blind and big blind fold, and the first player accepts the all in with a pair of 6s - and wins, as expected.