[blackaces13]

Here's my take. In Hold'em there are a lot of 4:1 matchups as well as a lot of 3:1 matchups after 2 cards as a result of domination. I'm not too familiar wth how different stud hands fare against one another but I suspect that AAx v 3 random cards is not going to win 75% of the time. I could be wrong but from what I got watching the WSOP stud event it certainly looked like most hands were about 55:45 even when 1 hand looked much stronger than the other. As far as O8 goes I would say that even the mighty AA23 has a lower expected BB per hand than AA does in hold em, not to mention it comes around WAY less often.

Again judging from the WSOP broadcast of O8 and O high it seemed that most hands were fairly even preflop but after the flop EVERYTHING changed. In hold em pots with few players or HU there are a lot of times where one player is a prohibitive favorite over another.

As for the more skill part, all I know is that NL hold em is considered the Cadillac of poker (yeah, that's the best I can do) and I've never even heard of stud being played in a NL format. Amarillo Slim says that comparing limit to NL is like comparing chess to checkers.

Well, that's all I got. Not much. That's why I wanted to hear why you thought the opposite to be true. I really don't have much to go when determining what forms of poker require more skill or have more frequent suck outs.