Using Wilson's Hold'em To Design Starting hands

[Brandon J. Fuchs]

I've ran over 100 million hands in wilson's software based on almost every user profile imaginable and have come to these conclusions -> Only AK, AQ, AJ, KQ, KJ suited or unsuited, or pocket pairs 9 and above, as well as Suited A9,A10, QJ, Q10, J10, K9, K10, are profitable hands. The rest should be discarded no matter what. Surely this goes with sklansky saying to play certain hand groups but this is one step farther. Some hands are just not profitable so by discarding J10 offsuit, K10 offsuit, A10 offsuit, 9,10 suited, etc.... you can add to your bankroll since these hands are big losers in the long run. anyone care to comment?

[geek]

If my math is correct, these hands will give you a VP$IP of 10.8%. That seems low. I recall someone posting a fairly large sampled dataset from PokerTraker of opponents EV versus VP$IP. My recollection is that EV peaked with a VP$IP of around 21%. Can't find that thread now however, so my memory may be off.

[BigJer]

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The rest should be discarded no matter what.

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Some hands are just not profitable so by discarding J10 offsuit, K10 offsuit, A10 offsuit, 9,10 suited, etc....

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I think you need to state some assumptions regarding number of opponents. You wouldn't play AToffsuit if you were heads-up, or in the small blind and everyone folds to you?

[Leavenfish]

Over reliance on any simulation is dangerous. It's a game of human beings with no one correct way to play many hands-- and most of your profit is going to come from post-flop play not wether you play JT offsuit. These types of post must amuse the poker gods, however.

[mistrpug]

I'm thinking that just because a hand has an overall -EV, doesn't mean it shouldn't ever be played. Maybe my logic is off here, but this is what I'm thinking:

If you never played a hand, your EV would be -7.5 Big Bets/100 (SB + BB 10 times) Those hands you mentioned (AA, KK, QQ...) are all good enough to have +EV when you play them, but ones just below that do not. However, playing those second tier hands give you less -EV even though overall it's still not +EV.

I'll try to explain a little further... ATo is -EV overall. If you played 100 hands and got ATo everytime, your BB/100 would be -7.5 (actually not quite since you will probably hit some flops with a free play in the BB). Just because playing that ATo "optimally" 100 times won't make it +EV overall, doesn't mean it's wrong to play it. Your BB/100 should be raised to close to 0 BB/100, which is good.

I hope that makes a little sense, and that I'm not totally off-base here.

[deception5]

I think that you would be excluding too many hands with this. Forgive me if this is really obvious, but one of the simplest counterexamples I can come up with is pocket pairs below 9. If you can limp in with these 8 times you'll hit the set once on average. The implied odds you get (since you can then raise on the flop, turn, and river) should more than make up for the price of getting to the flop 8 times.

[mmbt0ne]

That's what I was thinking. I don't think it takes into account the fact that you won't put any money into a pot with 55, and 3 overcards on the flop, and you will bet it strong if you manage to flop a set or quads. As long as you play the hands correctly, there is a much larger list of what can be profitable.

[PokerSlut]

I believe you're talking about the Shania.

[Senor Choppy]

Are you running these sims for all positions at once? The only correct way to go about this is to freeze the button, run x number of hands, then freeze the button at a different spot, and repeat.

Saying hand y is unprofitable overall is meaningless. It's its profitability in a given spot at the table that you're looking for.

If you still get these same results after adjusting for position, you're giving too much credit to players by specifying a lineup in TTH that's much too tight, or you're still making faulty assumptions somewhere.

[Bez]

If you only played these hands you'd be very easy to read and get little action.