Bryce's Pre-Flop Bible

[bozlax]

Not that it's actually germane to Bryce's point (see below), but some interesting fuel to add to the A4o v. QJo fire: I ran PokerStove for both against a top-20% range and a random hand. I know it's not really a good measure of preflop equity yada yada, but it does give a good indication of relative hand strength. The results:

Text results appended to pokerstove.txt

25,170,868,800 games 29.453 secs 854,611,374 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 56.7297 % 54.73% 02.00% { A4o }
Hand 2: 43.2703 % 41.27% 02.00% { random }


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25,170,868,800 games 31.875 secs 789,674,315 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 58.1347 % 56.91% 01.23% { QJo }
Hand 2: 41.8653 % 40.64% 01.23% { random }


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4,746,506,688 games 6.141 secs 772,920,808 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 41.0460 % 38.43% 02.61% { QJo }
Hand 2: 58.9540 % 56.34% 02.61% { 66+, A4s+, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, A9o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo }


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4,951,983,168 games 6.141 secs 806,380,584 games/sec

Board:
Dead:

equity (%) win (%) tie (%)
Hand 1: 42.1960 % 39.78% 02.42% { A4o }
Hand 2: 57.8040 % 55.39% 02.42% { 66+, A4s+, K8s+, Q9s+, J9s+, T9s, A9o+, KTo+, QTo+, JTo }


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Well, I'll be dipped in [censored]. QJo is better than A4o against a random hand. A4o is better against a top-20% hand. The difference between the two in either situation is negligible. Neither is good enough against the tighter stealing range that you should be playing it HU, much less 3-betting it, but clearly if you're going to 3-bet one you should also 3-bet the other.

fwiw, I just went back and re-read Bryce's original post. There're way too many words which clouds the funamental message (which I completely agree with, and actually said in here somewhere) that, "when stealing/defending, it's important to have a read on your opponent." I also think he chose to illustrate his point with some very poor examples for the limits this forum discusses. However, I appreciate the effort he clearly put into it.