"Fair Share" as starting standard guideline?

[AmericanAirlines]

Hi Everyone,
Another poster was looking for percentage win rate by starting hand data.

This lead me to think about starting hand standards.

While looking over a table of win rates by percent I found my self thinking, "Should the rule of thumb be, Never start with a hand that doens't win more than it's fair share?"

Fair share being, for example, that heads up, the hand should win 50% of the time or more.

I suppose there should be some allowanance for implied odds, especially in two tier structured games.

But for the CO flat $5 game perhaps fair share is a good starting point.

In any event, I'm grappling with how to keep my starting hands straight, again because of my primarily stud background. Not used to thinking about all the parameters that seem to go into a decision in HE.

Just about every book on HE goes into detailed starting had reccomendations. I rarely see any mathematical justification that a given hand is correct to start with.

Any thoughts?

Sincerely,
Frank

[David Ottosen]

Every hand you play should win more than it's fair share. However this does not mean winning more than 50%.

It means that for every dollar you put in the pot, you should receive more than a dollar back. Unfortunately, given that you can't create a chart in a book that describes every position, every number of limpers, every blind structure, and every opponent model, it's a little tough to quantify this.

Actually, I take that back. It's not unfortunate that this can't be done. If it could be done, it would be a hell of a lot harder to win. The ability to make these judgments are what makes you a winning player.

[Andy B]

I don't think that this is how you should be looking at it. To take your heads-up example, you might play a hand that only expects to win, say, 40% of the time. Such a hand may be profitable because you expect to win many bets with it if you hit, but can get away from it cheaply if you don't.

[deadbart]

You bring up an excellent point about the Colorado betting structure, and other spread limit structures. In these situations, especially if the pot gets raised fairly often, you really need to be playing mostly hands that win more than their fair share.

[AmericanAirlines]

Hi David,
Hmmm... perhaps the way I stated left my interpretation of "fair share" open.

What I mean to say is, "If there are 10 players, I shouldn't start with a hand that wins less than 10% of the time."

Heads up it would have to tighten to 51% winning. (Assuming the no-foldem stuff... all calls to the river...etc.)

I suppose it's another way of describing EV.

I was speculating that implied odds might cause one to break such a proposed rule as well. So might occasional deception, or the ability to manipulate players and pot sizes.

I'm just starting to grapple with these ideas. So bear with me. Still looking for ways to be as sure as possible I'm playing in +EV land as often as is possible to know.

Thanks for the input.

Sincerely,
AA