The Rule of 4 and 2

I am horrible at math. I am one of those people who use a calculator for everything, including addition. I even have a macro button on my keyboard that allows me to launch my calculator with one press. When I am on other computers, Start > Run > Calc is my best friend. When you play poker to make money, math becomes an important element of the game. You are constantly figuring out odds and need to make decisions fast. Such actions come natural to most with any sort of basic math knowledge, but for me it comes rather difficult. It's not that I don't know how to add, multiply, or subtract - it's just that my mind sees two separate numbers that require an action to make one number and my mind goes lazy and doesn't compute. I sit there with a blank stare on my face while my brain decides how much effort it's going to take to "crunch these numbers". This of course becomes a problem if you want to play poker to make money. While I could force myself to memorize charts and percentages, I rather turn to some simpler method's of figuring out my odds.

One of those method's was outlined in Final Table Poker with Phil Gordon and is called the Rule of 4 and 2. What this "rule" allows you to do is take how many outs you have and ballpark your percentage to make your hand from the flop and from the turn. How it works is you figure out how many outs you have and if your on the flop you multiply your outs by 4, if your on the turn you multiply your outs by 2 - whatever answer you get is the estimated percentage you have of making your hand.

Let me use the following as an example; your drawing to a Straight. After the flop you calculate that you have 8 outs left in the deck to make your Straight. If you take your 8 outs and multiply them by 4 you get 32 - so you have 32% in favor to improve your hand. The actual percentage in this scenario is 31.5%. Impressively close? Now imagine a blank comes out on the Turn, you calculate your outs as still being 8, but this time instead of multiplying your outs by 4, you will multiply them by 2 and get 16 - or 16%. Actual percentage to improve to your Straight is 17.4%.

While this Rule of 4 and 2 is not dead on accurate, it does enable you to quickly figure out about where you stand if your hand needs improving. Using the Rule of 4 and 2 and incorporating it into Pot Odds and Implied Odds has enable me to make quicker decisions when I am playing online or at a real table. I also believe that the method is so simple that anyone can use it and incorporate it into their games immediately. When I first heard about this method a year ago I was completely amazed on how quick and easy I could calculate my percentage to make my hand using the Rule of 4 and 2 - I have been using it since.

For those of you who have watched Phil Gordon's video, this is nothing new to you. But for those who have not, this might seem like a surprise - a good one at that. For your viewing pleasure I have crafted a chart that shows your outs, from 1 to 20, and ran the numbers of 4 and 2, then compared them with actual percentages. I hope you find this chart useful or at least entertaining.

In conslusion, if your not a math whiz take a lesson from me and make math easy by using shortcuts. Use the Rule of 4 and 2 and make your decisions easier when your in the hot seat.

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Replacements: "Like Quicksand"

Recently I was watching one of my favorite football movies, the Replacements. While I am not a football fan, at all, this is a movie that I can never get enough of. What does all this have to do with Poker?

In one of the scenes the team was having a meeting discussing "fears". After a comical barage of fears that included spiders and bees; Shane Falco, played by Keanu Reeves, talks about "Quicksand". When I listed to him speak what "quicksand" ment it seemed to resemble a common poker fear known as "tilt". We all know the semi-common definition of tilt. Usually it's something in the lines of "after a player loses a large pot he plays recklessly making bad raises and calls and eventually costing him a lot of chips". A shorter definition, "when a player is heated they make bad plays that they normally wouldn't and lose a lot of money". These two, plus many others can describe what tilt is, but I think Shane Falco describes it best when he talks about "quicksand":

You're playing and you think everything is going fine. Then one thing goes wrong. And then another. And another. You try to fight back, but the harder you fight, the deeper you sink. Until you can't move... you can't breathe... because you're in over your head. Like quicksand.

If you look at it in the point of view of the tilter; you just lost a big pot... maybe by a suckout. The next hand you play aggressive, and lose. Then you play even more aggressive, and lose. Eventually you look down and you realize that you just gave away most of your chips and your down to the felt. You have a sick feeling in your stomach and you feel like everyone at the table has luck on their side but you. Even if you know you tilted, you sit there... steamed... thinking "why can't I catch at least one freaking hand".

As a poker player, I know I've been there and I am sure you have too. We all tilt from time to time, and even the best players in the world will go on tilt. It's part of the game. The best in the business tell you to just walk away, get up and leave the table. Cool off, then come back. They tell you this because it keeps you from getting too deep, losing all your money and putting yourself down to the felt. It's very important to remember to just walk away, and doing so can save you tons of money in the long run.

The point of this post? See Replacements, it's a great movie. But also remember the words of Clifford Franklin, "Quicksand, it's a scary mother man".

Lastly, Good luck to all the WSOP players out there!