The Horse Race Paradox in Stud
The Horse race or the horse race paradox as it is also known was first introduced by David Sklansky in his book “Getting the best of it”. The idea of comparing horse racing with poker is the following: If a horse runs well or a poker hand is good however cannot improve, 7 card stud players may run into a mathematical paradox. This mathematical paradox, called the horse race, is where many new players fall down when playing hands with a good face value but no drawing value.
Taking this basic concept and applying it to www.FullTiltPoker.net is quite easy. If a decent hand is up against an opponent drawing and the hand has a 60% chance of winning, it is a great situation to be in. The poker player will take down the pot 60% of the time, so betting out is always profitable in this situation. However, if another opponent is also in the hand with 40% chance of hitting their draw, there are two opponents with 40% chances of hitting their hands and the 7 card stud player now only has a 60% times 60% chance of winning. This turns into a 36 percent chance of winning for the seven card stud player with the best hand, which is still not a bad win percentage given there are two other opponents still in the pot. If now a third opponent gets involved with another draw with the same percentage of hitting it the original player who actually have the best hand at the moment in time has just a 21.6 percent chance of winning the hand now. This makes the player the least favourite to win the hand now even though he is holding the best cards.
What this teaches many seven card stud players is if they hold a good hand that is not likely to improve, it is usually beneficial to thin the field. This will remove drawers from the hands and makes the winning percentage for the player rise back up. The other way round, 7 card stud players should understand that when they are holding a good hand like a high pair with no real chance to improve, their hand loses a lot of value as more people enter the pot. If the game is loose then it might be a good idea to realise that hand like this have much less value.
The horse race 7 card stud paradox offers a PokerStars.net player good insight into playing in multi-way pots with some hands and simply isolate with others. We know that the individual hands often add up to more than 100%. Yet, we also know that the collective hands cannot win more than 100% of the time. Thus, as stud players, we must discriminate how and when we play various hands.