Chinese poker - hand analysis

Hello, so we continue our series of articles on Pineapple Open-Face Chinese Poker. In our last article we looked at the layouts of the first 5 starting cards. We met a little earlier in the year with Chinese poker rules and scoring in Chinese poker. Today we will analyse the full full hand played. From the first 5 cards to the last. The game being analysed is played for real, at the low limit of TonyBet Poker. We analyse the real game to see the real mistakes of both your opponents and yourself.
Chinese poker - hand analysis

First 5 cards. It is a very big advantage that we have a position in this case, it is a huge advantage for us. Now let us look at what our opponents have said. Player "AAlien" was the first to act, without any information about our cards, and chose a very aggressive line. In this case his line choice is not "bad", but it is very aggressive and the opponent has a very high % to make the wrong hand and just get burnt. In this case, he has only two reels and does not know how many are already in play. Also the middle is very weak, if he had A or K instead of 7 it would be much better. In this case, I myself would choose the line: 2 9 / QQ7 ( 29 in the middle, QQ7 at the bottom). The reason for the safer and more passive line is that he plays with absolutely no information.

Looking at the first opponent, we cannot in any way say that he made a mistake, but we can only see that he took the most aggressive line. However, when we look at the second opponent, we immediately see the fundamental mistakes of Chinese poker. Although his hand seems to be quite decent and it is a poor starting hand, let's take a closer look. All of his cards are 100% live (when he folded, the cards of the player we are analysing were not yet available). So all his cards are alive, and so are all the hearts if he wants to bid a suit. And another very important point is that he has K, and so far they are all alive. So what do we need to pay attention to? First of all, we see that the first opponent has two queens at the very top, so the chances of GeorgeB drawing two more queens are very low, so his live K fits very well in the top box. Also, it is very important to note that when he raises his hand, no A has come out yet, so there is a high probability that he will be able to draw with AA, thus forming a safe line with KK on top and AA in the middle. The perfect bet would be. K at the very top, playing for fantasy. It is also important to mention that if we get KK we not only get +8 points and fantasy, but we also win a point against the opponent's queens and the possibility of her scoopinti.   The middle should be 43, two live small cards, as they are perfect for two pairs and there is still the possibility of a row. And leaving 7J at the bottom is a great opportunity to get a colour or a row or two pairs higher than the middle line. Looking at our second opponent's layout, we can assume that he is not familiar with the subtleties of pineapple poker and is playing more like classic Chinese poker, where the top box is not as important as in pineapple poker.

So we have one aggressive player at the table and one complete fish who doesn't catch much, so it's a really good place to play. Now let's talk about our hand. Not only do we have position, but we also get a monster!! It's great to see a hand like that. Again, the big factor is that we have the A and they are all alive, so there is a good chance that we will pull another one. So, right away, we want to put A in the middle. With A in the middle, we can very safely put KK on top. With all the A's alive, there is a very high probability that we will safely complete our hand by placing an AA or two pairs in the middle. Also, KK on top wins against the opponent's QQ and the opponent's 3. That's an extra two points for us and a chance  Scoop. At the bottom there is the UN, which is also very cool, because we have the possibility of queuing/colouring and getting two pairs as well.

So in this hand, we have a position advantage, a card advantage and another player at the table who doesn't understand what he is doing.

So that's our first three cards to discard, but before we look at them, let's take a look at what our opponents have received and placed. The first opponent has placed a pair at the bottom and a livelier small card in the middle. His line is very clear, he is trying to keep his hand from burning up and to get the fantasy. Meanwhile, the second opponent is again "mushrooming" the J at the bottom really well, but the A at the top already shows that his opponent is not very strong in this game. The problem is not that the A on top is bad, the problem is that the opponent chooses a bad line at the beginning and then puts the A on top in the second hand, which shows that the player does not have a logical grasp of the game and a plan of what to do in the later hands when he receives certain cards.

The only bad thing about him is that he put both A and J on the two cards we need. That leaves us with two A's and only one J.

But once again, fate smiles on us, and we are dealt two vital cards. A in the middle line, which guarantees that we won't get burnt with our KK on top and T on the bottom. Now we are left with the easy part, we just need any pair on the bottom to avoid getting burnt, score +8 points and get fantasy.

We received three more cards. Since we have a very big positional advantage, let's start again with a review of the opponents' cards. The first opponent has placed 7/8. Very importantly, we have to think not only about what and why the opponent is laying, but we also have to think about what card the opponent might have discarded. In this case, again, the opponent makes a strange choice. The opponent has a perfectly live card: an 8, which he could place in the middle line. Thus increasing his chances of survival. He now needs to draw either a 3 or a pair lower than 9 on the middle line (because the highest card on the lowest line is 9). So there is not the slightest reason for the opponent to do so. By putting a completely live card on top, he only increases his chances of getting burned. A good sign for us. Given his line choice, there is a very good chance that he will simply burn this round.

The second opponent this time bets without error, of course what can be the errors when you draw the right cards 🙂 J down to trips, down to one out on full houses. And a couple in the middle. Even though his opponent has made a bad start, his hand is safe, and if the first opponent burns out, he will have already earned +6 points from him, not including bonuses. And he is not likely to lose us all the lines, as his third J greatly reduces our chances of getting a full house.

So our hand. Now our main headache is how to reinforce the underside so as not to burn the arm. The second opponent has placed a third J. That means we have only 2 tens left on the bottom. So we definitely have to give extra outs. We look at our cards: Q is the only one left, it is no longer good. 6 is two, ok that's it. 5 - all three are alive, ideal situation. We put a fully live card on the bottom to give us more % to draw a second pair.

Because there is no way we can reinforce the top line anymore (if we help the KKK we will always burn). Any card will do. Both cards don't change anything for us or our opponents, but I have a habit of always playing the higher card.

So after 5+3+3 cards we are in a very good situation. We still get 6 cards and we have 5 outs at the bottom ( T/T/5/5/5). Meanwhile, there is a high probability that the first opponent will burn, because not only does he need to draw one of the 5 outs at the bottom, but he also needs to draw one of the 5 outs in the middle, where he has only 2 outs left (3/3). Of course, there is a chance that he will pull a pair in the middle. However, that pair will have to be smaller than the second pair at the bottom.

Before the last hand is dealt. The first opponent draws one of the two remaining 33. If he had not been able to do so this turn, his situation would have been extremely complicated.

Meanwhile, our second opponent makes a mistake again. This is a very typical beginner's mistake, where the cards are dealt without paying attention to what our opponents are dealing. In this case, whether GeorgeB has //3/3/A// or //2/3/A// at the top makes absolutely no difference. He receives no bonus for 33 pair on top and loses to both his opponents. So in this case you have to think of something else.

Note that there is one surviving A. So if GeorgeB were to top AA3, he would not only get +9 points and win against both his opponents, but he would also get the right to play fantasy. So by blocking the top, he loses a very big opportunity to make his hand a winning one. Some players will argue with me that he keeps the lines open for two full houses, but you are completely wrong and it is very easy to see that by counting the outs. He has only one card alive at the bottom, one K (when my opponent made the hand, my cards were not yet in). So. down one out and a chance to score +6 points and win against both of us. There are two outs left on the middle line, but in order to take advantage of them and earn +12 points, it is necessary to draw a king on the bottom. So to get two full houses you will need to draw 1/1 and 1/2 of the remaining cards.

Meanwhile, our cards are back in our favour, and we draw the 5 we need, which practically guarantees that we won't get burnt. Even though we lose to our second opponent on the first and second rows, the KK on top and the fantasy more than make up for it. Against the first opponent there is a good chance that he will burn and we will score +14 points + fantasy.

So 5 goes down. What to put in the middle? A card that won't spoil the deal, because we will have to put two cards in the middle from the last draw, so it is necessary to put a deader card in the middle so as not to accidentally draw a second pair in the middle.

So, one last division. The first opponent draws not even one card, but two, and wins against both of us on that turn, plus a bonus +6 points. It's not uncommon to draw so well at the end, especially if you have a lot of live cards left, but anyway the opponent took a big risk here. The second opponent no longer strengthens his hand, but he could still make a mistake by putting a 4 in the middle. It seems like a fantasy, but at low limits players can make even such mistakes and get burned when it seems impossible. So the next step is scoring.

TonyBet Poker has a very nice scoring system to see who wins on each line. How much we get for bonuses and how much we get overall. You can read more about how points are calculated in Chinese poker here.

So, even though we started in a very good position and the cards fell very well at the start, we finished with only +1 point. But there's no need to be sad, the first opponent did well, so we will definitely earn more from him in the long run.

So let's get on with the fantasy.

china-7

Fantasy is the bonus we get if we manage to land a pair of QQ or higher on the top row during the game without getting burned. In this case, we with KK and our opponent with QQ both got fantasy. Now we get all 14 cards in our hand at once and have to put them in our queues. Seeing the cards right away gives us a very big advantage over our opponents who are playing the cards in a straightforward way.

Here are the final calculations after the fantasy. We were very disappointed here that the first opponent who played the fantasy had smaller combinations than us everywhere, so we earned an extra +3 points from him. We should have earned even more points on this hand, but the second opponent simply ran out of money. So we didn't make the maximum money we could have.

This was the second article on Chinese poker, brought to you by Brilliant. In the first article we looked at the starting five card layout, and in the next article we'll take a look at Chinese poker maths and how to count the cards that suit us.

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