Quote:
Originally Posted by Captain R
OK, I'm just saying these % are not very useful since they don't actually model the actual % at all. Like I wouldn't make any future playing decisions based on these numbers, because a realistic number may be closer to 90% or closer to 10%.
Estimates are always dependent upon assumptions. But if you don't even know what the raw percentages are, you're less informed than if you do. For example, do you know what type of game conditions will lead you to be dominated 90% of the time? Or 10% of the time? Do you know what factors impact this? If you don't, then hand-waving and saying that it could be one or the other isn't particularly helpful.
Ultimately, you're really just thinking about ratios. Let's say that you're happy with your hand 50% of the time. Then you know that amount of money you win when you flop the best hand must be greater than the amount of money you lose when you don't. If you're happy with you hand more than 50% of the time, you don't need to win as much to be profitable. If it's worse, then you need to win more (or lose less).*
And none of this even begins to take into account any overlay you have from preflop (which is actually quite large here). I didn't run the numbers, but I would guess that flopping a top pair of queens while holding Q5o happens around 13% of the time. (It's 33% to flop any pair, so about 16% to flop a pair of queens, and there aren't *that* many ways for overcards to fall.)
Getting 13:1 means that you only need to get into those positions 7% of the time for the preflop side of things to be profitable. You're about double that.
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*Edit: To put this into perspective, remember that you're talking about a 7-handed flop. You make as much money as you lose if you go heads up on the flop, turn, and river. Every extra bet that goes in from any of the other 5 players starts to pad things for you. If you suck so much at postflop that you spew away chips when you have the worst of it and can't get anyone to call when you have the best of it, you probably just suck at this game. To put it another way, if you were to sit in the small blind and start every hand with top pair weak kicker in a 7-way limped pot, and you can't figure out how to make money, poker just isn't for you.