Hypothetical question that will blow your mind.

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Think of all the money you would make in pots where you are BEHIND, yet you know for a fact that by the river you will win the (huge) pot.

I think the answer is obviously to know what the final board will be. You can play every single hand that you know will hit big... 72o, 32o, any 2 suited cards, as long as you know you'll make 2 pair or better by the river. You can STILL make your reads and figure out if your 2 pair is good, but there is no way you can ever know that your offsuit trash will turn into a full house by the river (if you choose to see everyone else's hand). Basically, you can still know in part what people are holding by their betting and/or their tells, but there is clearly no way to ever know what the final board will be. Knowing the final board is a way bigger advantage in my opinion.

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This is everything that I agree with. Like I said, if you hold 22 and you know the board will be AK522, and it's a NL cash game, you will guarantee to hit BIGTIME. Everyone says "Yeah but you hardly ever make quads". That's because you rarely stay in the hand past the flop to hit runner-runner quads on a board like this with 22.

And also, like this guy said, you can decipher a hand range of your opponent by the way you raise PF, and by how they play the hand. You can NEVER figure out what the board will be before seeing it. In other words you can't raise 6xbb and go "when you raise 6xbb the board will always pair". I mean come on. But when you raise 6xbb and you get a call, you can start to decipher what kind of hand villain holds ANYWAY!

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However, once YOU know the ENTIRE BOARD with 100% certainty before the flop is even dealt, you completely eliminate your need to rely on probabilities.

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You still need to put your opponents on a probable range of hands.

Now that I think about it, the advantage to seeing your opponents hole cards is even bigger than it first seems. It's been said on here before, but knowing an extra 18 cards is a huge advantage in calculating your outs. There will be only 29 and 28 unknown cards on the turn and river, repectively, instead of the normal 47 and 46. In addition to the fact that you can play better against your opponents, you can also better determine the odds of you hitting your hand AND knowing which of your outs are live.

(Slightly off-topic for my post: you still can't be sure what to do if you know that a flush draw on the flop will be completed on the river, and you are holding top pair top kicker against two calling opponents.)

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Good thread.

In a full ring limit game, I would want to know the cards that are coming. Ina shorthanded game, knowing my opponents cards would be preferable. It would be much more important to catch their bluffs in that situation.

In a no limit game of any kind, I think knowing the opponents cards would be best.

In Omaha, I prefer to know whats coming. My opponents would flip out as I sucked out on them time and again.