Pure Theory Question

[David Sklansky]

You are playing heads up no limit holdem. No ante. No blinds. Your opponent moves in $1000 in the dark. This is the one and only hand. You will call him with all hands that are favored. Except that he now makes an offer to you. He will expose his cards if you pay him something. You get to look at your cards before you make him an offer.

Hopefully you see that it is worth giving him something with any hand exept AA or 32. My question is what two cards would be in your hand that would pay the most for his exposure.

[TStoneMBD]

great question

[Ralphie]

I just saw the question and didn't want to look at 100 posts, so excuse me if someone already said this.

I have heard the average hand is Q7. If this is true I believe this would be the correct answer. What ever the the average strength preflop hand is, I believe will be the answer. Here is my reason:

If your hand is above average you have an easy choice, call every time.

If your hand is below average you have an easy choice, fold every time.

If your hand is exactly average, with no advantage or disadvanage in a race you cannot make a profitable decision without more information. For this reason I believe the hand closed to break even in a race will gain the most from this extra info.

[jdl22]

Without much thought I'm thinking 98, 87 or 97. The central location makes it so there are a lot of hands that you dominate and that dominate you. Hence the information is quite valuable. It shouldn't be something like AK or 34 because the chance of the information being useful (ie you actually make a different decision based on the information than you would have in the dark) is going to be less with those hands. With these middle of the deck hands it should be higher.

[WriterBoy]

[ QUOTE ]
Without much thought I'm thinking 98, 87 or 97. The central location makes it so there are a lot of hands that you dominate and that dominate you. Hence the information is quite valuable. It shouldn't be something like AK or 34 because the chance of the information being useful (ie you actually make a different decision based on the information than you would have in the dark) is going to be less with those hands. With these middle of the deck hands it should be higher.

[/ QUOTE ]

i was thinking along similar lines, but i would say JTo.

[d_rod]

Could the answer be q7o?

Newbie Reasoning: Q7o is the most marginal hand. If you held AA, it wouldn't be valuable to know what the opponent held. Congruently, if you held 27o it isn't valuable to know either.

If you're smack dab on the fence, it seems to be the most valuable situation to be able to see your opponents cards...

[OrangeKing]

[ QUOTE ]
Could the answer be q7o?

Newbie Reasoning: Q7o is the most marginal hand. If you held AA, it wouldn't be valuable to know what the opponent held. Congruently, if you held 27o it isn't valuable to know either.


[/ QUOTE ]

Just to correct a slight error in your newbie reasoning: there would be some small value to know what your opponent had if you had 72o. There are several hands which 72 is favored over, and even a handful it dominates.

Chances are that you've been told that 72o is the worst starting hand in hold 'em, but this is only true in a multiway pot. Heads up, 32o is significantly worse. Granted, this is only important theoretically, but since a lot of people seem to get it wrong, I like to point it out in all these threads. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[TheShootah]

I am gonna take a guess and say whatever the median hand is between Q7 and 23. I think that with Q7, you know your hand is good half the time, so it doesn't make much sense that it's worth that much to see it. It seems like the real hand would be somewhere in the middle of 23 and Q7, but I really have no idea.

[anduril]

A8o

[InfernoLL]

A8o is a monster compared to a random hand.