Combo Counter Cheat Sheet
Definitions:
Blockers:Used to refer to a player holding a card that represents one of the cards opponent’s cards or outs. For example, if Player A has JTs and the flop comes JT4, then the likelihood the player B has JJ is significantly reduced since Player A contains one of the Jacks, or a Jack blocker.
(The combos of JJ that Player B can have is reduced from 3 to 1).
Card Removal:Card removal is the effect that your own hand or the cards on the board often makes it less likely that your opponent has certain hands or certainhandcombinations.
If for example you have AQ, it is less likely your opponent has Ax or Qx hands, since your own hands blocks two of the eight total aces and queens that are in the deck. This in turn will change the combinations of Ax and Qx hands in which your opponent can have, thereby influencing his range (in this case, making it less likely he contains hands with an Ace or a Queen).
Combos: The number of possible combinations of a given hand that your opponent can have. For example if you want to count the combinations of AA that your opponent can have preflop, then you would write it like this:
Ac As
Ac Ah
Ac Ad
Ad Ah
Ad As
Ac As
As you can see there are 6 combos total. The same is true for every pocket pair.
Counting Combos Explained:
PREFLOP:
Unsuited Hands: (Ex. AK offsuit) - 16
Pocket Pairs: (Ex. QQ) - 6
Suited Hands: (Ex. AK suited) - 4
POST FLOP: (Ex. Jh Th 4d)
Pairs: (Ex. QJ) – 12
Note: If your opponent can only have QJ suited then his pair combos are significantly reduced from 12 to 3.
Two Pair: (Ex. JT) – 9
Note: Much of the time the number of two pair combos your opponent can have will be significantly reduced because of the fact that their hand range will be comprised predominantly of suited hands.
If for example your opponent would only play JTs preflop (but not JT offsuit), then there would only be 3 combos of two pair that he can have.
If the J and T on the board are different suits, then there are only two combos due to card removal effect.
Pocket Pairs: (Ex. QQ) - 6
Sets: (Ex. JJ) – 3
Note: To easily figure out the total combos of sets your opponent can hold; simply multiply the number of cards on the board by 3. (Ex. On the flop: 3 cards on the board x 3 combos per card = 9).
In the case above, there are 9 combinations of sets that your opponent can have, three of each set (JJ, TT, 44). This is assuming no combinations are discounted due to blockers or the specifics of how your opponent played the hand.
Open Ended Straight Draws (Ex. KQ) - 16
Note: Just as it is with two pair combos, the total number of OESD combos your opponent will likely be holding at any given time heavily depends on whether or not they are capable of having unsuited cards.
Think back to how they played the hand preflop. If you can confidently eliminate all unsuited hand combos then the OESD combos gets reduced from 16 to 4.
A good example of when this is probably true is on lower textured boards such as 852. While it’s conceivable that your opponent could have 76s, most players aren’t capable of having 76 offsuit.
Flush Draws: (Ex. Ah3h) - 1
Note: Each unique flush draw has only one combo. Since there generally aren’t that many FD combos that your opponent can have because of the board texture and the way the hand was played, most of the time we can simply count these combos out one at a time.
To illustrate this point, let’s take a final board of Jh Th 4d 7h 2s.
Without getting too specific with respect to the preflop action, if we just give our opponent a reasonable range of playable hands, we can see there simply aren’t that many flush combos he can have.
AhKh, AhQh, KhQh, 9h8h, and maybe 6h5h or 5h4h or the rest of the nut FD combos (Ah9h, Ah8h, Ah6h, Ah5h, Ah4h, Ah3h, Ah2h) depending on the preflop action.
It’s important to note that the majority of the FD combos your opponent will have will usually be nut flush draw combos. In the case above (assuming he can have all the nut FD combos), the nut flush will represent 9/13 or 70% of his flushes.
That’s why having the nut flush draw blocker is so important and can significantly affect one’s decision with respect to how they play the hand. We’ll cover this more in later modules.
Counting Combos Chart
Include a chart here for just the hand types and the combos that’s easy to memorize, print out, etc.