"72o is the worst Hold'em hand" - How?

[aujoz]

All - thanks for the feedback. Some responses have been enlightening (Arnfinn Madsen) and some have been positively inane and useless.

I appreciate your efforts.

As a solid STT player, I have a fair idea about HU hand rankings. It is interesting in this thread to read that while people can come up with claims that are technically true (eg, "72 fairs worse against big pocket pairs than 32") they are simply useless - if you KNOW your opponent has a big pocket pair, then you'll obviously not put yourself in a situation where this is an issue (eg, pre-flop all in and turn your cards over).

The reason I asked the question is because pre-flop all-in moves (when you have a small stack to bb ratio) are dependent upon ranges - ranges that include your opponent(s) having a variety of cards.

In many pre-flop all-in situations, 72 is stronger than 23, because many reasonable calling ranges include A6, A5, A4, 66, 55, 44, that 72 is much stronger against than 23. Obviously, they're both [censored] against 88+, and the marginal benefit of the straight possibility in 23 is not significant.

Given I know this (and given that this is reasonably self-evident to anyone who considers the situation in its realistic implementation) I appreciate the feedback. I think the most interesting part of this is how hand rankings change with the numbers of players remaining. The links from the bottom of Arnfinn Madsen's linked page make for interesting study.