Aggressive play catching on

I have just returned from the WSOP and have found that fantasy land has increased the agressive play on the top and middle hands in Open Face Chinese Poker.  I tried to pay close attention to the different styles of play from people from all over the world, and it was very clear that the majority of players are much more aggressive.  Also, it seemed that this strategy really paid off more than it hurt when a player would foul his hand.

After digging a little deeper, (and making some calculations on the Open Face Chinese Odds Calculator) it makes perfect sense.  Being able to calculate odds in all parts of the hand really opens your eyes to how much higher the percentages are to hit cards needed to cover aggressive plays in th middle and top hands.

For example.

The player with the bottom right hand just drew a 7C.  The low risk play would be to put it in top hand as to not risk a miss set, especially with the player in the bottom left highly likely to miss set his hand (he has less than a 9% chance to make two pair in the middle, but has a 44% chance to make trips in the back).  However, the bottom right needs to improve his hand vs the top two hands, so pairing the 7 in the middle is the better play. (44% chance to hit two pair or 25% chance to hit trips to cover the 77 in the middle).  The pair in the middle is now ahead against all hands and frees up any high cards to go on top.

Here is how the hand turned out.

The Bottom Right hand ended up losing 10 points due to top left hitting QQ up top (and now making fantasy land), however, he was able to win the top and middle vs the top right, thus saving 5 points had he gone the conservative route.

Thanks for reading my blog today.  Please take a minute to download the calculator on your iPhone or iPad.  There is a free version, but the paid version gives you access to all the percentages.

I will post another hand in a few days.