Re: Median Best Holdem Starting Hand
 

When iterating against the top half of the hands it's as if your saying that your opponent will call with the top half and fold with the bottom. That seems pretty reasonable to me. Maybe it could be improved by weighting the hands you're iterating against according to estimates of the chance your opponent will call with that hand.

Seems to me this produces a pretty good ranking system. Not sure how you might prove it though.

PairTheBoard

Re: Median Best Holdem Starting Hand
 

I'm not sure about that logic Aisthesis. If I was at the 1st of 5 hands I think I'd ask myself, is this hand better than the best hand I can expect to get in the next 4 hands? If it is, wouldn't I want to play it? I believe the Median Best hand ranking goes up like a logrithm rather than linearly, so going by the Median Best Hand criteria I'd think it would encourage you to make the move with a lesser hand than by your method. If that's correct it could make quite a difference. There's also the factor of number of players remaining to act. Seems to me this is worth some thought. I think most people make this decision purely on feel which might definitely be improved on. I know when I get in that situation I'm just guessing.

PairTheBoard

Re: Median Best Holdem Starting Hand
 

I wish I had an immediate link to it, but, in order to avoid having to jump to a webpage every time I wanted to look at it, I finally just saved the webpage to my computer. I know you can find a link here to the actual list, which I want to say was created sometime around the end of last year.

It was developed in conjunction with the Sklansky article, and the question was this: You are in SB, folded to you. Up to what stack size is it +EV to move in against the BB in this situation?

Hence, instead of a winning percent, or equity or such, a hand is associated with a stack-size. But the bigger the stack-size, the better the hand, and the equation has to take into account how the given hand will hold up against the superior hands.