07-14-05, LearnTexasHoldem:
High Card Strength Heads Up
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I dealt over 100 hands and plotted the results. Only 2 of the 100 hands were won with a high card. The vast majority were won with medium to high pairs and an almost equal number were won by 2 pairs. Not being satisfied I purchased a poker simulator on the web and ran it many, many times. I no case could I verify your article's claim that a good portion of these hands are won by high cards. I also ran the simulation against 2, and 3 other opponents and again the results were the same. If played to the river - high cards rarely, if ever win these hands.
The only way I can make sense of this portion of your article is if a winner emerges from pre-flop betting. Then I noticed that a high card dealt face down almost always wil be the best hand pre-flop. But I don't think that's what your article is trying to suggest!! From my very basic research it seems that a player needs to play high cards pre-flop aggressively, but that these hands must improve in order to win against a call or re-raise.
Lastly as an anecdote I played in a small local tournament last night. I'd never met this group, but they were all very conservative, tight players. I dealt the final table and watched closely to see what kinds of hands won in the short handed game. These guys would never open a pot without an Ace or medium pair, but here again in no case did I witness a high card Ace or King holding up to win unless it paired or helped make part of a straight or flush. I assume that if these players were more aggressive with their betting styles that their high cards pre-flop would have helped them win many more pots. In fact, in this game I have no doubt that an aggressive bettor would have won the tournament.
Am I missing something, or is there a nuance in your article that I am not understanding?
Jeff Marinstein
Answer: Everything needs to be put into context. The point of that exercise is to show how difficult it is to flop something heads up, not that you should treat an Ace high hand on the river as a really strong hand. When you play heads up poker, high cards will win a great majority of the time. (When no one has a pair, the high card is the best hand.)
Usually what happens is the preflop raiser wins after making a bet on the flop into the opponent who hasn't flopped anything. Sure, if both players called blindly to the river every time, it is more likely someone will catch a pair, but that isn't realistic. If you have 92 and the flop is T-4-3, you will be hard pressed to call my bets until the river with your six outer -- even if you knew that both cards were live. Secondly, the point is that if you do catch something on the flop it is much more valuable against one opponent than at a full table.
For example, at a full table if you have 45 and the flop is T-4-2, you don't have a great hand; at a heads up game, I would put my money in that you have the better hand right then; the same goes for if you had a 23 there. Next, in your example the game was short handed. As more players get dealt in, the greater chance there will be big hands out there. There is a huge difference between heads up play and three handed.
Also, make sure you don't confuse what I mean by heads up play. Heads up play isn't when two people are in a hand. Heads up play is when there are two players total at the whole table. I stand by what I said that Ace high takes down a lot of hands in heads up play. I would suggest getting together with a friend and playing a real heads up game. Lastly, I just dealt out 10 random hands heads up and out of those 10, 3 already were won by a high card (neither player had a pair).
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