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Most Profitable Starting Hands
Having watched the numerous repeats of those interviews with various players on here at the Sky tournaments, especially the bit about their favourite hands, it got me thinking a bit.
Yes we get the old favourites of Aces, and kings, and I think even Trevor Harris one said on air, how can anyone not say that pocket aces isnt their favourite hand, and well I was thinking there has to be a reason for this, and surely then I got to thinking yes aces and kings are the two best hands to have pre flop but how profitable are they exactly, and is this the reason that I would say that my favourite hand is 9 10 os.
It's a hand I can get away from if I dont hit big, for little investment, and also a hand I can reap the rewards with when I do hit big, where as those more premium hands are the ones that I'm likely to win big against if everything goes in my favour, but when it doesnt I can get away from easily enough, thus minimising the amount the premium hand wins.
So the question is what do people think is actually the most protifable hand to hold pre flop.
Is it the monster hand where you win a lot of small pots, with both the occasional big win, and big loss, or the more mediocre hand where your losses are minimised with maybe a few more bigger wins, or is it all situational?
As someone who plays mainly for fun I dont play often enough to be able to say one way or the other which way, so I'm just wondreing what others opinions are in respect of how profitable is a hand that wins 80% of the time compared to a hand that say wins 40% of the time.
Look forward to hopefully some interesting replies
.
Aski
and yes if someone said would you prefer to have pocket aces every hand, I'd say yes, but in reality that isnt going to happen, so lets hear everyone thoughts
Also just an addendum to this, does it matter if its cash or tourny, and if so does it also matter in respect of what stage a tourny is at. The reason I say this is most people would say suited conenctors arent bad to play early on in a tourny when blinds are cheap, so does that early profitability get wiped out later on in a tourny when blinds are bigger, and players are forced to push thus making the premiums hands a lor more profitable due to that situation
Yes we get the old favourites of Aces, and kings, and I think even Trevor Harris one said on air, how can anyone not say that pocket aces isnt their favourite hand, and well I was thinking there has to be a reason for this, and surely then I got to thinking yes aces and kings are the two best hands to have pre flop but how profitable are they exactly, and is this the reason that I would say that my favourite hand is 9 10 os.
It's a hand I can get away from if I dont hit big, for little investment, and also a hand I can reap the rewards with when I do hit big, where as those more premium hands are the ones that I'm likely to win big against if everything goes in my favour, but when it doesnt I can get away from easily enough, thus minimising the amount the premium hand wins.
So the question is what do people think is actually the most protifable hand to hold pre flop.
Is it the monster hand where you win a lot of small pots, with both the occasional big win, and big loss, or the more mediocre hand where your losses are minimised with maybe a few more bigger wins, or is it all situational?
As someone who plays mainly for fun I dont play often enough to be able to say one way or the other which way, so I'm just wondreing what others opinions are in respect of how profitable is a hand that wins 80% of the time compared to a hand that say wins 40% of the time.
Look forward to hopefully some interesting replies
.Aski
and yes if someone said would you prefer to have pocket aces every hand, I'd say yes, but in reality that isnt going to happen, so lets hear everyone thoughts
Also just an addendum to this, does it matter if its cash or tourny, and if so does it also matter in respect of what stage a tourny is at. The reason I say this is most people would say suited conenctors arent bad to play early on in a tourny when blinds are cheap, so does that early profitability get wiped out later on in a tourny when blinds are bigger, and players are forced to push thus making the premiums hands a lor more profitable due to that situation
Comments
But aces is still the most profitable hand when 100bb deep as my holdem manager statistics say that i earn more than double with aces than any other hand when playing 100bb cash games, my second most profitable hand is kk lol :-)
Very much matters if it is a cash game or tourny!!!
I love little pairs in cash games, especially in multi way pots. Massive stacking potential!!
My fave poker saying "Ive been hitin more sets than Roger Federer" lately
I did play a hand yesterday, I raised UTG with 44, FOUR callers behind me and the flop comes, ACE ACE FOUR.
I lead out, and there's 4 folds! How could there NOT be an ace in those 8 calls??? lol
Any sorta hand like 34/45/56/67/78/89, and pairs are cool to play when Im calling in position. When I'm making the running, I want stronger hands. Don't mind opening with 2-3 UTG occasionally tho
Darn I knew I would miss one, although I was concious of having too many options, thus with a cough and a wink says that AK can be counted under the connected option of suited and non suited
Aski
Suited connectors!
some sort of analysis as opposed to feeling is always good, as I could stand up here and say that I always play 7 2 os and its my most profitable hand, but in reality I wouldnt know.
However to throw the cat amongst the pigeons here, how would you describe your playing style. Are you a fairly tight player, thus the majority of your hands that you win, will be premium ones or would you say that the analysis is fairly representitive. I like to play devils advocate you see
But for now we will say ACES are leading with evidence of 1, as opposed to opinions
Dohhhhhhh, Thanks for the confirmation, after I made the post I realsied that hang on cash and tounry players could have different views, due the blind levels, but thanks for highlighting the postion situationas that obviously has some impact too.
As for your hand tell me about it. I'd been sitting tight and made a raise pre flop with 2 3 suited. Couldnt beleive that I got 4 callers, thinking wow image means nothing at this table. For some reason I cant explain, when the flop came down with an ace, despite having missed totally I put a bet out and everyone folds, which then gets me thinking what on earth did they call a tight players raise with if non of them had an ace
I would have thought that, at least where players are deepstacked, that this is far from the most profitable.
It really only plays well against smaller aces.
It's value comes from "fold equity" i.e. being able to get your opponent to fold pre-flop.
Playing against an opponent who has called you with a medium pair, you're not going to get action if you hit your ace so you rarely get paid big and you are susceptible to set miners hitting their card or people with worse aces hitting two pairs.
I say all this without looking at my stats for AK so I'm probably wrong!
What we need to remember is that this is about profitability. You may have won 100% of hands where you hold a certain hand, but then find that another hand where you only win 10% hands is actually the more profitable.
I guess that everyone will have a hand where they won big once, like Kirsti stated above, but the question is, is that one hand profitable over time, thus from a research point of view, one off wins would have to be discounted, as obviosuly we need to look long term.
ie if someone comes on and says they always plays 7 2 off as its profitiable for them, then Id be hoping that they back that up by saing they have played it 1000 times won with it say 50 but made this much from those 50 wins, im comparison to another hand where they have won 800 times but only made this much.
Why do I have to think of stuff like this on a Monday morning, my mind is all a boggle now
....my opponent's hand
In tourney's especially late on I love getting AK, 10-20 BB's push, push, push !
AA ALL THE WAY!
If i look at how many times i should have been dealt aces vr my actual times i had aces, the results are quite similar....29500 hands/220 probability of getting a pocket pair pre=134, i was dealt aces 134 times and KK 131 times.
I think the reason people think other hands like 55 are more profitable is because when you hit a set and stack top pair you remember this more than when you have to fold it on the flop most of the time, where as with aces you are expecting to win so when you lose it hurts and you remember this more than all the times you win.
If anyones intrested in the hands i lost the most money with its, 85o and q2o lol.
This is kinda off subject but do you reckon a nitty 10/2 player playing 1000nl with a 3bet% of 1 would lose money playing aces? ....surely they would not win much lol.
obviously your premium hands AA/KK/QQ/AK are great starting hands in cash games too but they tend to win small pots and lose big ones (unless u floppa whoppa) id take small pairs, suited connectors, suited aces in a deepstacked cash game anyday of the week over AA/KK, if u miss you throw it away, if u hit you can potentially take down a huge pot .
It's not too shocking really,obviously there is a slightly different dynamic at play with very deep stacks (cash games in particular), but - for everybody who says you either win small pots with AA or lose big ones. I'd say that you don't have to lose the big pots (or not many of them anyway).
A lot of people lose big pots with AA when it hasn't improved at all and they only end up with a pair of aces, these are hands where you should be looking at pot control to minimise your losses because you haven't got much of a hand.
All in all you still lose bigger pots with AA then you win on average, but the point is that you should be winning a lot of smaller pots with AA, a few bigger ones when you hit a monster and then only lose a handful of big pots.
All in all you should be making a lot of chips with AA - if it's not your most profitable hand, you're doing something wrong.
Understand what you are saying in respect of minimising the losses with the premium hands where the community cards go wrong for you, and maybe in a way that is the point I was trying to get at (who knows in reality what this was all about
I guess maybe this is where the difference lies between the average player, and the ones who play more for entertainment , as opposed to those with more experience, and the ability to read their opponents better, in that the first group may find it a lot harder to let go of the premium hands, and thus when they lose big, its become a selective memory thing, and hence why they then dont class those premium hands as one of their favourites, preferring the more unothordox hands.
I guess what I need here now is people who actually class a non premium hand as their favourite starting hand, that actually record stats as well, to say how their favourite hand compares to the premium hands. It may be that even for those players Aces are the most profitable, but their favourite hand is up amongst the best.
So I guess I need Mr Hartigan and Mr Banin to come on here and justify their decsion to class J 9 Diamonds and 8 7 off as their favourite hands, and how thei profitablility of those hands compare to the premium ones.
Aski
AA, KK, QQ etc aren't 'premium hands' they are 'premium starting hands'
Similarly to what you suggested I think a lot of people's problems arise from not knowing the difference.
Once I had a big enough database and thoroughly analysed the stats I was surprised to find my biggest losing hole cards by far were TT. I was very glad I realised though, because it was obviously a major leak in my game, I realised I must have been playing TT much too hard. I've adjusted my game now, but I still consider TT to be 'the hand of doom', it's much more likely to lose you a big stack of chips than win you one.