POKER

Texas hold'em starting hands - players' face down cards - are one of the areas of poker in which Sturgeon's Law can be seen at work. Theodore Sturgeon, a science-fiction writer of four decades ago, once observed that 90 per cent of everything (he was referring to sci-fi writing) was "crud".

Subsequently the percentage was moved around by those quoting him to as high as 98 per cent, and his observation was applied to other spheres of life other than the original he intended.

Its application to poker certainly seems to hold true. Only about five per cent of starting hands can be regarded as "good". The rest, if one ignores elements such as bluff and luck, can be safely consigned to the rubbish bin. But poker is not about "good" pocket cards. They are just a starting point.

Some poker sages suggest that there is no such thing as a "good hand" in hold'em, only good flops, the first three common cards which all players can use to build a hand.

Sturgeon's Law can also be applied to flops. There are a total number of 19,600 possible flops. With two cards in a player's hand, this is any three from the remaining fifty - 50 x 49 x 48 divided by 3 x 2.

The number of flops which help a player's pocket cards is probably less than five per cent. Only one time in three will the holder of two non-paired cards make a pair on the flop.

Only one time in nine will this be the top pair, and if it is, this could lead to a confrontation and a significant loss. A good flop, one which makes two pairs for example, occurs only one time in 50, or two per cent.

These sort of figures are an indication of why playing poker is about factors other than the cards.

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