[Buzz]

Travis - How your opponents play makes a big difference in how you should play. I don't know specifically about PP since I don't play there.

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would you continue with the idiot end, or the 2nd nut flush etc?

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Those two seem quite different to me. In general, I think a 2nd nut flush is much stronger than the idiot end of a straight.

I don't think you can really lump all the high hands together. Full houses, flushes and straights all have different considerations.

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do you fold to the paired board w/the nut flush h/u?

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I guess "h/u" means heads-up. In general, no, I wouldn't fold the nut flush if heads-up. When the board is singly paired on the river and you have no piece of it, quads are possible, as are six different full houses. Each of the full houses is at a different step in strength. Think of the nut flush as one step below the worst possible full house. Would you fold the worst possible full house? (It's a rhetorical question).

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I find myself losing money playing the non nuts, even short handed post flop.... But, when I make the folds, I see that I would've taken it down often enough to make me 2nd guess folding.

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Exactly. Welcome to the club.

There simply is no way of getting around knowing how your opponents play.

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I don't have this trouble w/the non nut lows, they always find the muck, and the few times I'm wrong I don't 2nd guess myself.

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Seems a reasonably level headed approach. Actually, there's usually more involved than just having the non-nut low. What to do with anything depends on (1) how your opponents are playing, (2) all the cards on the board and (3) all the cards in your hand. There's no pat rule on how best to play non-nut hands. When you're starting, I think you're at least safer if you play tightly so as to avoid starting hands where you'll end up with certain non-nut hands, particularly non-nut lows and non-nut straights.

But after you learn more about the game and how your opponents are playing, I think you can expand your range of starting hands. You can hardly play
A[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img],4[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img],5[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img],K[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] if you're going to fold non-nut low hands after the flop, but in truth I believe that hand is a stronger starting hand than
A[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img],2[img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img],8[img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img],8[img]/images/graemlins/club.gif[/img].

Here are my simulation numbers for both hands in a nine-handed game against eight non-folding opponents dealt random hands (and with random boards) 10000 times:
hand.....high.....low.....scoop.....total
A288s.....285.....762.....591.....1638
A45Ks-.....354.....778.....564.....1696

The A288s starting hand makes both the nut low and the nut flush more often than the A45Ks- hand, yet the latter hand did better in the nine-handed simulations. What does that mean? I think it means a strong, experienced player can probably do as well with the A45Ks- hand as with the A288s hand. But maybe while you're a beginner, you should avoid hands like A45Ks-, where you're more likely to end up with the second-nuts than the nuts.

That's just my opinion.

Note: If you've been follwing recent discussions here, I don't know how you can ever again can trust anyone who posts simulation data on this forum. But let me at least assure you that I do not find falsifying simulation data in response to a question from an inexperienced player (or for any reason) amusing.

Buzz