[Buzz]

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FWIW, I'm sticking REALLY close to the starting hands recommended at O8Poker.com.

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JP - That's a good site and has good general advice regarding starting hands.

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One question about the starting hands: It recommends that you "Play any hand that has A2 in it".

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I think A278n and A288n are about the worst A2XY hands, and they're marginal, along with a few others that have middle cards. (n means "rainbow")

But although a few A2MMn hands are marginal, most A2XY hands are very playable and some are premium. (M means middle card, 6,7,8,9)

In terms of giving broad, general advice, you can play any A2XY hand. You still need to find a favorable fit with the flop.

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This seems a little loose to me since the object is to scoop as often as possible.

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Scooping is the object. But playing any A2XY hand is not too loose.

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A2xx seems like a hand that has great low potential, but how often can you expect to get a wheel and take it all?

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I think you may be making a fundamental mistake here. By focusing on the ace and the deuce, you may not be giving enough consideration to all four cards in the hand (although you may think you are). It's a fairly common mistake, and difficult to correct.

Let's look at one nice hand with an ace plus a deuce:
A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img], 2[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img], K[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img].

That hand is only going to make the unquartered and unsixthed nut low about 15% of the time, and the quartered or sixthed low another 10% and it will make a low with a live ace or deuce roughly another 10% of the time. And that's all for only half the pot.

But even though the hand has no flush capability and even though it has no counterfeit low back-up, the hand scoops about 8% and wins the equivalent of a whole pot about 20% of the time (including the scoops). All that actually makes A2KKn a very nice, though not ideal, starting hand.

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Of course if the Ace is suited or there are 2 high cards in there that's a different story.

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Yes, and that's the example I gave. All right, let's step down a notch. A299n is still a nice starting hand, scooping about 6% and winning the equivalent of a whole pot about 16%. (And doing about the same for low as A2KKn).

To specifically answer your question about how often you'd make a wheel with A2KK, I think 51312/1712304 = ~3% of the time, but they won’t all scoop. However, you can scoop without a wheel.

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I have been playing "any A2xx". Maybe only play A2xx from late position?

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That would be a mistake in a low limit game, except maybe for A2MMn hands (ace-deuce rainbows with two middle cards). You'd be playing too tightly if you did that. You'd do worse than you're doing now.

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Aggression is something that I'm still trying to grasp in O8. I typically only raise if I have the nuts and sometimes if I'm drawing to the nuts on the flop (high or low) and rarely if I'm drawing to anything less than the nuts. Bad?

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There's a lot to learn here - when to be aggressive and when to be passive. It's not the same as Texas hold 'em - more complicated. It's very opponent, image, position, and hand dependent and something you'll be continually working on.

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Just still figuring out when to apply this more effectively.

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Get in line.

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Perhaps it's just variance and I started off on a bad run?

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Perhaps. I'd guess it has more to do with your opponents.

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I must be screwing up bigtime somehow.

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Perhaps, but not necessarily.

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(It kills me to see these guys play any 4 cards and drag pot after pot.

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They may not quite be playing any four cards. (Or they may).

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I saw a guy play AAA3 rainbow and make a wheel for a scoop this morning...ugh.)

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AAA3-rainbow is not "any four cards." In my humble opinion, AAA3-rainbow is very playable. But you have to know how to play it! (I'm going to have lots of people raising their eyebrows here, and I'm not recommending the hand for beginners).

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It's nice playing a game where you have to actually think.

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I agree.

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So, rip me a new one and let me know where I might be going wrong here...PLEASE!

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I don't know how to read your statistics. But if you're sticking to Greg's list of starting hands, I don't think that's where you're going wrong.

Buzz