You have discovered how brilliant the eight-low qualifier rule is.

When hilo was played with no qualifier, only suckers ever played high hands, since they could never scoop, and the suckers got emptied out so quickly the game had no longevity. By introducing the qualifier, high hands would occasionally scoop, meaning that suckers would occasionally have big nights. This is the key to having a good poker game.

Two-way hands are still the best money makers with a qualifier, but there is now legitimate value in the best high hand, something older players schooled in hilo no qualifier games do not appreciate enough, as much of the lore and axiomatic play of that game has been erroneously applied to Stud8 over the years.

I'm on my phone, but if a random hand has an 11.5 percent chance to make a low, you can't add them up. You have to take (1-11.5%)^8 to find out the chance all 8 players calling to the river fail to make a low, which is 37.5 percent, or 62.5 percent someone makes a low, roughly in line with OP's simple test.

But if a random hand has an 11.4% chance to make the best low and a ~0.13% chance to make a low that ties for best low, you can add up the first and half of the second (which ends up being 2686.5 because of >=3-way ties) for all seven players, for a total of 80.25%.

Oh, okay; I hate the new 2p2 mobile format.

So, *** vs KhQhJh wins low 137/600 times. That's a 22.8% chance to make a low. So there's a 12.5% chance noone makes a low, even lower than your 19.75% chance there. It's probably not a super relevant number, though.

The actual probability for any random hand to make a low is 0.18336. This is a lot lower than I expected and gives me a greater appreciation to play the higher side of the game.

http://people.math.sfu.ca/~alspach/comp49.pdf

Just some general ideas:

One of the strategy ideas I have heard more than once is that wile it is OK to try for either high or a scoop-able low you should try to determine early (by 5th street say) who is also in it with you for that half of the pot and determine your chances of winning against them, either by being best or trying to drive them out.

One of the advanges it seems to me of high-low split games is that you get fewer people competing for whatever side of the pot you're aiming for. With five or even six people seeing the river in a loose and wild Stud-8 game you may very well be facing only a single opponent for your half of the pot. An experienced player would be able to pick up early on who their competator is and either drop out early or try to drive them out (or at least drive out the 3rd aiming for your half), reducing uncertainty and suckouts in loose games wile keeping all the advantages of such games (bigger payouts and better drawing odds). Its easy in all but the tightest stud games to often find yourself second-best at showdown, but it would seem to me much less unlikley in a split-pot game.

I also noticed, upon reflection, that it was way easier to read hands in the stud-8 and razz games that I have played with my friends, much less of the "they bet into the second 3 they have showing, so do they really have trips or are they just bluffing?" kind of guessing in a high game. I'd just know after a wile who was probably going to win in the razz games or make the low in the stud-8 games by being at all observant. This obviously benefits the better players.

And only 1/4 of the time that you do are you going to scoop.

But people don't play "random hands". The probability of a 3-low hand making a low is more like 65%. The probablity of a hand like 334 making a low is like 25-30%. A 3-low hand is also going to have a lot of information available by 4th and even more by 5th. He'll almost always know when he's freerolling you, and/or when he can get extra bets in by whipsawing 2 high hands (or a high and worse low hand).

I agree that high hands are under-rated, especially short handed, and certain low hands are way over-rated, but that doesn't change the fact that good low hands rule the game.

That was one thing I forgot to ask last night, the probability of a 3-card low making low. Good to know.

Do the people rattling off these stats even play the game?

These equity stats don't tell you anything. You need to think about how many bets you'd actually win or lose if you decided to play these high-only hands. So sure, if you run a hand like 399's equity against a hand like 237o, of course 399 will do better. But the 237 hand is folding every brick on 4th (and often isn't playing at all heads up against obvious 99), so you win almost nothing. Worse still, if the 237 player catches an A up, or a 76 suited, or anything ominous, you probably never get to 5th street with your 9s, and if you're planning to call to the end, you're very often just going to be printing money for your opponent. You'll get freerolled a ton, and any good villain will play nearly perfectly against you because your hand is half face-up. You're going to lose way more bets when you lose than you'll win when you win, if you see what I mean.

I'm confused now kamikaze baby, are you in favor of playing highs or not? (Selectively/situationally of course, like all things in poker.)

Maybe I didn't make my point clearly. Of course high-only hands should be played sometimes. If you're up against two players with 3-lows and they catch Queens on 4th, you'll usually win a small pot. But it's completely situational, and you usually either win a small pot or lose a huge one if you won't fold your high hand because of some mystical equity chart you drew up. If you're dealt 9 3 9 what's your plan for the hand? If you're planning to call bets all the way to the river because you think high hands have good equity, then please let's play stud hi/lo some time.

It's pretty pointless to work out how many pots you scoop with high hands, because we don't keep track of how many pots we win. We keep track of how many bets we win, and that's the important thing. If your high hand can win you a lot of bets (if you can get someone chasing a low draw, say), then it's a good hand to play. If you're up against two people on 4th with 2 A and 3 4 showing, and you have a measly pair of 9s, you had better get out of the hand if you like money.

9's are pretty thin, even on 3rd street, in stud-hi anyway, but I get your point. Stud-8 is basically Razz with a sucker-draw factor and requires even more nitiness.

not sure why you'd come to that conclusion, but it's way off

+1

(that's the first, and probably last time I'll put "+1" after a post on this forum )