[DrPhysic]

Greg,
I know this is irrelevant to you, but it was a necessary exercise for me.

I saw 88 as a not much more than 50% shot against the range of hands that the EP short stack player would have. My gut said is was maybe a +.54 or +.55 EV.

You obviously know it is a lot better, but I had to figure it out.

I took all the hands the EP would reasonably have:
Any pair, A(anything), K(anything), and suited connectors from QJs to 54s. I know he could have a lot of other hands, but I think these are the ones he probably has.

I used the TwoDimes pokenum calculator to get the +EV for 88 against all of those hands, taking a rough average for AKs-A9s, and for A8s->A2s. Same for the other combinations.
Then tabluated the values, multiplied the number of possible hands by the avg +EV for 88 for that group of hands, Summed, and divided.

Average +EV for 88 against all reasonable hands he would have is +.61, or better than a 3/2 shot.

So of course you are right. I knew you would be, I just had to figure out why.

I guess I should have seen it. 88 is essentially a push against all pairs (6 smaller, and 6 larger), and has an obvious +EV advantage over any non pair.

Doc [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]