[Buzz]

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Don’t you think the statistics on hands such as KKQQ JJTT etc are a bit misleading?

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Hi Luckless - Yes. They are a bit misleading. But they do give you an idea of the relative value of hands. (And for me they serve various other purposes as well).

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I believe a lot of their high wins are due to paired board situations where no one has trips or a full house.

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Depends on the game, in my humble opinion. That's truer in tighter games than in looser games, and truer if when you make a move with one of these hands, your opponents, or some of them, will get out of your way.

Also depends on when the board pairs.

If the board pairs on the flop, and if five or more opponents have seen the flop, it's very likely that at least one of your opponents has a card the same rank as the pair.

In the simulations, not many wins are due to winning with two pairs. As you already noted (and I agree) the simulations are a bit unrealistic. Doesn't make them not worthwhile, in my humble opinion.

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In these situations you commonly have someone with a good low draw, combined with a flush or straight draw betting the flop hard.

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I'll agree that's how it is sometimes. There are a lot of different kinds of hands you can have and a lot of different kinds of flops and boards you can encounter. There are also a lot of different kinds of opponent play you can encounter. Hard for me to generalize that broadly.

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These are situations where it’s almost impossible to make the call, yet in the end you would either scoop or take the high half.

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I'm not sure what we're talking about here. What to do depends on a number of factors, including your cards, the cards on the board, and your opponents. In general, I don't think it's a good idea to continue without a good flop fit. When I don't have a good flop fit it's not "almost impossible" for me to make the call - it's simply not a thing I'll generally do. Instead, I get off the hand. If my hand doesn't fit with the flop, I fold to a bet. Period. (One on one is a different matter).

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Also in rare cases you can win with just top pair, those cases are rare and you wouldn’t find anyone making it to the river with that type of hand unless it was checked down.

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Well... winning with just top pair is not exactly what I would call "rare." Sometimes there's very aggressive betting by low hands which induces players to fold mediocre high hands. For example, if somebody bets what I think is the nut low into me and I also have the nut low plus top pair, I might raise to try to knock out a better high hand. I'll only do that when I think it's feasible to knock out a better high hand than the one I hold - and it's pretty hard to raise without the nut low. Obviously the ploy backfires when the opponent you try to knock out doesn't fold. I don't try it when I think it has a poor chance or no chance at all of working. The chance of success of the ploy mainly depends on the tenacity and good sense of the opponent at whom it's directed.

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it appears to me that games (even at the lower limits) have tightened up dramtically (at least on the sites I play on).

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Interesting. I think it may be partly because more and more individuals are simultaneously playing four different tables.

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Omaha/8 becomes a very tricky game when pots are played with 3 or less players preflop

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Yikes. Those games tend to become very aggressive and consequently very stressful. I like a challenge, but there's too much stress for me in a game like that. Fun and exciting to do battle, but not good for my cardiovascular system. No thanks.

Buzz