[Grunch]

All,

Keep in mind that when I said that 99 doesn't have a lot of big-pot value, I meant if it didn't improve. That this is true should be obvious. If you are deep-stacked and all the chips get in the middle with you holding only an unimproved 99, is your hand usually good? The same is also true of 76s. In this regard, they are the same. Without improvement, they aren't going to win a big pot.

But most people advocate building a big pot with 99 preflop from OOP, whereas nobody advocates doing so with 76s. Since 99 and 76s are the same as far as big-pot equity is concerned, people must have some other reasons for PFRing with the 99.

In the case where niether hand improves on the flop, I believe there are two big differences in most peoples' minds.

First, fold equity. People like to PFR 99 in order to take the pot down either PF or on a safe flop with a CB. But it's highly unlikely that a better hand is going to fold, even if that better hand is just TPMK. Draws might even raise. Since 99 has showdown value in that it might win unimproved at a showdown, getting blown off the hand would be bad and what's more getting to a cheap showdown (again, unimproved) would be good. PFRing & CBin don't serve these purposes.

76s on the other hand has no showdown value UI. Which makes fold equity and taking the pot away when nobody improves a better plan with 76s than with 99. If we get blown off our hand, we got blown off of air. Whereas with 99, we got blown off of a hand.

Second, pot equity. It's claimed that 99 figures to be the best hand PF, and that's probably true. If somebody had a higher pair, they would probably have raised. But HE isn't a 2-card game. Our equity situation will change drastically for better or worse on the flop, as will everyone else's. The flop is the nexus of the hand. If we PFR and get callers with overcards, we are about a coinflip and in fact don't have (much of) an equity edge. If we PFR and everybody folds, well then we just forced everyone to fold a worse hand. We don't lose the pot, but we did lose in a ToP sense in that our opponents played perfectly against us.

The opposite again is true with 76s. If we PFR and get callers with overcards, we're a bit of a dog but not out of the race. What's more we don't have to improve to win here. So long as they dont improve, that's all we need. Since this is true most of the time, we will win very often.

If we PFR with 76s and everybody folds, they probably folded a better hand. So again, we win.

I will say that the biggest problem with PFRing 76s is the difficulty in playing a flopped draw. We'll be faced with difficult decisions on most streets when this happens. But you take the good with the bad & I don't think that the difficulty of a future decision is reason enough on its own to choose a line on an earlier street.