[greatwhite]

[ QUOTE ]
In SH O8, a hand with A2 is going to be a favorite over almost any other hand, albeit not by much.

That being said, I highly reccomend using table selection standards in SH O8, as you will often be able to find two or sometimes three terrible players in a game, and try and make quality decisions throughout the hands which will enable you to beat the game more frequently.

Starting hand selection in SH O8 is an issue, and you've displayed an intuition for the game by bringing up a subject that requires a lot of thought to come to a final answer.

I think you're wrong in some of what you said, and it sounds like a small sample size with variance related results might be what is causing the pain. You named several hands that you dubbed unplayable, but I will take A229 all day in a SH game with 5 people seeing the flop.


From my experience, playing the blinds is the most important part of SH O8.

As far as loosening up your standards or vice versa, I would reccomend that you still maintain decent standards and play your strong hands as aggressive as possible, including low only hands in 3-way+ pots.


GL

-tex

[/ QUOTE ]
Thanks, but I was talking about A229 in a tuff shorthanded game meaning that only a few players were seeing the flop, usually with a lot of preflop raising. In that case, would a hand like A239 even be playable? Although it looks juicy it doesn't have much going for the high end.