[Voltaire]

I took a closer look at my stats for A9s-A2s. (BTW, get PokerTracker and you won't have to guess at your results.) There is an apparent anomaly in that the worst performing hands are A9s, A8s and A7s losing respectively 0.09, 0.17 and 0.09 BB per hand. The best performing hand is A5s at +0.12. A5s-A2s outperform A9s-A6s. Overall A9s-A2s is a wash.

However, if I just take the hands that were not blinds, A9s-A2s is a clear winner at +0.03 BB per hand. (n = 5,345 or about 668 each hand. Distribution theory would yield 5,400 hands or 675 each from a sampling of 223,914 hands played.)

Of course it may be that I play A5s-A2s better than I play A9s-A6s. And it may also be that the results will smooth out as my database grows. Incidentally, A9s-A2s VP$IP = 74.50. Better results would probably come from a smaller VP$IP! I play a lot looser than your average winning player. But that's another story.

Part of the anomaly probably results from playing multiple tables. If I only played one table at a time A9s would probably be the best hand, not to mention I would probably have better results!

My conclusion is the same as before: A9s-A2s are winners if you take into consideration what the other posters have said, namely that you have to play them well. A good point made (by mvdgaag) is that playing marginal hands makes you look looser and gets you more action on your solid hands. Clearly in any game in which you sometimes get free cards (that are really free), most marginal hands are winners. Alas I see a free card that's really free about once every 50 hands or so, if that.

I don't have Sklansky's book on small stakes limit hold'em in front of me. I lent it to my son-in-law. :-( But remember Axs is a Group 5 hand for Sklansky. The "loose" games that he would recommend playing Axs in upfront would have to be very loose with lots of yummie free cards.