I'm having trouble reconciling simple win rate charts against Sklansky hands.

For example, he says to start playing 22 in late position https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_...Strategies.JPG

But if you're up against 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 players, this is a losing proposition and barely above breakeven against 1 player over the long run: http://www.natesholdem.com/pre-flop-odds.php#2x

Though his hand selection is similar to that chart, it's not as precise.

The win rate chart also suggests it's valid to play K2s in early position since it's profitable over the long run against 1-9 players with random hands.

Improving opponents hands to Sklansky hands against a win rate based hand selection has almost no effect: http://www.pokercalculatoronline.com/

Why shouldn't a good win rate chart be used instead?

Sklansky/Miller > natesholdem

Muck the K2s.

Expected Value Chart by Position. Pokerroom tracked such in their games. Sklansky groups are average groups, not situational.

Yeah, but why? How did he come up with those hands?

They're almost identical to the ones on the chart.

Those are skewed by play choices. https://www.tightpoker.com/hands/ev_position.html

For example, AA pays higher in BB than UTG because there are more callers in front of BB, and everyone knows what a UTG raise means.

If the UTG is the 1st in then a 9-player chart shows the next player 1st in.

From the site:

Position
Cards SB BB 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 D
AA 2.71 2.82 2.49 2.52 2.74 2.78 2.80 2.74 2.88 2.96

3 is preflop UTG.

It has the lowest expected value because a UTG preflop raise causes everyone to fold, yet no one knows when the BB has AA despite an 85% win rate heads up and 31% family pot.

Looks like position does add 0.25 to 0.14 despite more callers for SB and BB.

A paper on CFR hand ranking looks more like a win rate chart than a Sklansky chart.

https://www.aaai.org/ocs/index.php/W...load/7083/6489

Computer scientists are fabulous programmers, but not the best poker players.

CFR has supposedly solved limit heads up.

And yet, you still play the game.

So, in theory, why do you play?

You saw my troll post in the troll forum. Truth in every joke.

Online, just a curiosity.

Your intuition should lead you to conclude that FLHE is too easy to solve, if a basic implementation of CFR on top of a pull table of preflop/flop decisions is all that is required to be within a few percentage points of the final solution.

It is a game for friends to play at home, and maybe still belongs in 8-game formats.

Otherwise, it is dead.

Just like stud has been almost perfectly solved for decades, yet they still offer it.

This "solved" crap is lame anyways. Poker needs to start doing freestyle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess Bring back gin!

I guess Shawn got banned, but I'm going to respond anyways:

It should. A good winrate chart is the only true test of good multiway preflop or predraw poker in any form.

This is why I think we could play mad libs with the title:

If the answer to the question is YES that's optimal then the fill in the blank answer is clearly "profitable." Nothing else qualifies as a universal answer for preflop selection.