[jae686]

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Situation is: Texas Holdem, 9 Players are at a table, 7 players fold due to unplayable hands. Only SB and BB are left.. is BB any more likely to have a playable hand?

I'm 99% sure each hand is an independent event so it shouldnt make any difference but my friend thinks otherwise.

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Each starting hand (as in the two cards dealt to each player during one "hand") is clearly NOT independent of the others. The probability of you holding AA when someone else also does is clearly not 1/221, for instance.

This is actually a very easy question to answer based on a simple assumption--that other players will make preflop folds (with no one else in yet) in some predictable fashion that involves using their starting hands to make a decision.

That is to say, if the decision to play or fold has any dependency on the two cards dealt to you, we can make an inference about your cards based on your decision. This has some (possibly unknown) effect on our inferences about other unseen cards.

To simplify, if you are playing a 3 handed cash game and a pro on the button open mucks preflop, you KNOW (based on the assumption he will not open muck AA) that there are AT LEAST 3 aces among the 50 unseen cards. If he had raised, you would not have known this.