Best Hand 8-players

[kirshon]

Assume 8 players all go all-in pre-flop and everybody shows their cards before the community cards are dealt. Is there a way to work out who has the best chance of winning the hand? (remember I am talking pre-flop so no community cards are out yet). What's the maths?

[fiezk]

Very hard to do "by hand", use an odds calculator. Should be easy to google.

[kirshon]

Is there perhaps a way to calculate it in Excel?

[MrDarling]

there is an odd calculator right here :
http://www.texasholdem-poker.com/odds-c ... holdem.php

Sure you can write your own - but why bother , there are so many free ones online!

[kirshon]

That calculator is BRILLIANT!!!! I am trying to build an Excel model to do exactly the same. Is it possible to do in Excel? Whats the porcess? Assuming 8 playes, that leaves 36 cards still in the deck. Do you then have to work out all 376,992 (36 choose 5) hands and see who wins each hand? Seems a massive task. How does the holdem calculator do it so quickly?

[Sean_in_NJ]

How does the holdem calculator do it so quickly?

A Monte Carlo simulation. It's really the only way to handle problems like this in a reasonable amount of time.