[BadBatsuMaru]

I'm a winning player and I think my endgame is at least as strong as the rest of my play. I'm close to finishing Harrington's 2nd book, and it's got me thinking more about how I play heads-up. I thought I might make myself some charts with what percentiles different hands fall into so I can tweak my play (Harrington addresses heads-up play in terms of where your hand falls, whether it's in the top 10%, 20%, 30%, or 40% vs. a random hand).

As I was thinking about how to make my charts and analyze my play, I noticed something about Harrington's top 10% of hands:

pairs AA-66
suited AK-A8, KQ-KJ
unsuited AK-AT

I'm a little surprised by this ranking of hands, because I'm generally happier getting A9o (which isn't in the top 10% of hands) than I am getting KQs which is actually in the top 5% of hands!

So this made me fire up PokerStove and look at a lot of hands. Harrington's listings seem good. Here are the hands I looked at that were very close to the "top 10%" cutoff:

KQs = 63.400% vs. random hand
66 = 63.285% vs. random hand
A9s = 62.781% vs. random hand
ATo = 62.722% vs. random hand
KJs = 62.567% vs. random hand
A8s = 61.944% vs. random hand
------------------------------------ top 10% cutoff
A9o = 60.773% vs. random hand
KJo = 60.569% vs. random hand
55 = 60.325% vs. random hand

What I find interesting is the number of times specific hands lose to "better" hands.

KQs = 63.400% vs. random hand (top 5%)
A2o = 54.929% vs. random hand (top 40%)

KQs = 45.558% vs. A2o
KQs = 41.701% vs. random hand with an A

I just think it's very interesting that KQs is in the top 5% of hands as far as how well it plays against a random hand. The only aces in the top 5% are ATs and better. Still, KQs is an underdog to any hand with an A.

What I'm really concerned with is how valid a strategy it is to play hands strongly based on their performance vs. a random hand. A lot of people seem to play much too tight in the later stages of a tournament, but then when it gets heads-up or 3-handed, they'll shift gears and be willing to go all the way with any ace or any pair. According to Harrington, when the blinds are huge you should be glad to call an all-in with any top 20% hand, but I'd say that when a player has been too tight in the later stages of the game, you should be pretty scared to call with the top 20% hands (and even the top 5% or 10% hands) which are unpaired and don't have an ace.

It also seems like hands in the A9-A7 range are much more worthy of pushing heads-up than their low ranking implies.

Any ideas? Am I some kind of idiot?