hi, i'm a beginner at poker (as you will be able to tell by my question), and i have yet to read sklansky's book.

however, i see from the net that based on sklansky's hierarchy of starting hands (and using bill chen's formula) that, to use an example, AJo is as good as a J9s. this is counterintuitive to the beginner. also, i plugged the the combination into the poker odds calculator (http://www.holdemshirts.net/oddscalculator.htm), and it tells me that AJo would win 67% of the time v. J9s. can someone elucidate me on this?

thanks!

If you're playing cash games with decent sized stacks the running it hot and cold percentages don't matter much. Implied odds is the driving force behind the game.

The hierarchy, I believe, is based on the percent chance to win vs all hands. The odds you are referring to are head to head, j9 vs AJ, which is different.

You shouldn't really get too caught up in this type of thing. Like Lego says, the "value" in each hand comes from the implied odds. In general, AJo has small implied odds, (IE, you are more likely to win a small to medium pot with a top pair type hand), where J9s has huge implied odds, where if you are playing it you plan to win a medium to large pot (straight/flush draws).

Since you can't play J9s in every position, and combined with the other downfalls of AJo, it is quite simple to see that overall, they will be about even in the amount of money you make with them. That IS NOT to say that AJ vs J9s are equal when all in pre-flop, which is what you are doing.


Hopefully I explained it coherently Either way, my advice would not to be worried about things like that, as it will become second nature as you learn and progress. Get a solid starting hand chart and after 100k hands or so all of these questions will be answered

I did a quick check and see that AJo vs a random hand is 63% to win while J9s is 55% against a random hand. I believe this is what is being referred to. Ajo and J9s are close to equal against a random hand

breezh4x explained it well in the post above yours. 63% and 55% are not close to equal at all; that's actually a pretty big difference. There's more to it than that, though. It's true that AJo will win more often than J9s, but the type of hands they'll win (top pair) usually are associated with small pots (people tend to shut down when an Ace hits the board unless they have one, too, or unless they can beat it or draw to beat it). A hand like J9s, on the other hand, won't win as many pots but some of the pots it does win will be when it makes a well disguised hand (straight) or when it hits late in the hand (flush) after several bets have gone in, so the pots it wins will be a little bigger on average.

Heads up, AJo dominates J9s, but again, that's not the whole story.

Hand values are relative to what they are up against. Here's an example:

22 > AKo (5.3% edge)
JTs > 22 (7.7% edge)
AKo > JTs (18.9% edge)

Or, notice that the best possible preflop equity against AA is with 76s, but many other hands are ahead against 76s.

A perfect example of the Ali-Foreman-Frazier paradox! Ali beat Foreman, Foreman beat Frazier, but Frazier beat Ali.

Also, if you put those three hands in a 3-way pot instead of heads up:

Hand 0: 36.266% 36.11% 00.15% 142560324 608208.00 { AKo }
Hand 1: 34.929% 34.78% 00.15% 137283804 608208.00 { JTs }
Hand 2: 28.805% 28.65% 00.15% 113108400 608208.00 { 22 }

Interestingly, only JTs retains its relative position against the other hands in heads up pots -- it's still a dog to AKo and still a favorite over 22. AKo and 22 reverse their positions with respect to each other when JTs enters the pot. In fact, 22 goes from being a favorite to a dog against the AKo when any random hand joins in.

Just one of the many surprising and counter-intuitive factoids that makes poker so rich and complex. And hard.