[microlimitaddict]

been reading the forums for a couple months and have really enjoyed them. am venturing on to make my first post. i've only been playing online for a couple of months (HE and O8) but at least I am a semi-consistent winner. thanks to the various ideas on this board which have really helped get me started analyzing the game properly.

so pardon the potential ignorance of this question please - (as well as the length...explaining things ideas succinctly is not my strong suit). i know only a little bit about the various mathematics involved in determining which HE hand is at an advantage pre-flop but i believe it has to do with running a computer sim of all the possible 5 card combinations that can come out of the deck.

On the WPT on Travel Channel today (which I saw for the first time and which wasn't as bad as i thought it would be) they had a 77 vs. AK at one point. I can't remember if the AK was suited or not (i think it wasn't). They mentioned that this was pretty much a coin-flip hand (they were all-in). i believe they graphically gave the 54-46 advantage to 77.

I started thinking about my hunch as to how the advantage is generated and wondered if 54-46 is an accurate stat if there were other players involved at the table.

for example, if there were 6 players at the table...but 4 of them folded and it just came to those two guys pre-flop then I suspect the AK is a little stronger then 46% based on the number of folds. My thinking is that each fold represents a hand that is less likely, albeit slightly, to hold an ace. And that each fold is more likely, albeit slightly, to hold a 7.
Obviously, it's difficult to quantify since all players play differently at different times.

But I look at it this way. There are 48 unknown cards and there are 3 Aces remaining. The 4 folds (8 players) represents a slightly higher chance that there were few, if any, aces among those hands. Consequently, there is a slightly higher chance that the 3 A's are in the remaining 40 cards to be dealt (same for the King as well I should think).
However, if any of those 4 players held one of the remaining two 7's they were more likely to have a foldable hand. Thus, the 40 remaining cards are slightly less likely to hold a valuable 7.

So instead of viewing it as 3 A's and/or two 7's remaining out of 48 cards....why not think of it as something like 2.8 A's out of 40 and 1.6 7's out of 40 since the 7 is the more fold-able card?

Obviously this doesn't hold true in heads-up games where one can do a sim of all the possible combinations and be certain that each combination has an equal chance of being dealt. But in a normal, non-psychotic game, where most players play somewhat normally then it seems each previous fold should represent something when it comes to gauging the calculations.

I'm sure this is not an original concept but I would be interested in any info about this that is out there.

please feel free to inform me if i have made no sense at all or if my concept is too simplistic.