[Phat Mack]

It looks like Zee and Badger have a serious disagreement on starting hands.

I agree with the beet man that they may be talking about different types of game.

There are games where a raise BTF might buy the button. There are games where a raise BTF produces a string of calls. There are games where a raise BTF produces a war and it's capped with 6 or 7 playing. Each game seems to have it's own threshold of where players will become pot stuck and start drawing dead ATF for pot odds. Once this threshold is crossed, I don't see much benefit in additional raising.

He says later on that most hands aren't more than a 3-2 favorite over other hands heads up.

I have trouble disagreeing with this. I did a bunch of sims several years ago with full tables. In a ten handed game, the EV of a random hand should be 10%. It was difficult to come up with a hand that exceeded 15%.

As Badger points out, in O8 you've seen 7/9 of your hand on the flop and you pretty much know your exact odds of completing. It's nice to have your opponents past their pot-stuck threshold if you hit something. I believe Badger is also correct in stating that players who wait until the last card to bet are losing EV.