Q7, the computer hand?

[1fog]

Watching the high stakes no-limit game on GSN and they said Q7 is referred to as the computer hand, like it was common knowledge. I don't see the relation.

[gilbert]

something about how Q7 makes more straights or two pair or something more than any other hand.

the reason it's called the computer hand is because it's odds were run on a computer a long time ago or something.

[Schwartzy61]

I think it's because it took a computer to prove that it was the Median hand, meaning half of all hands are stronger than Q7 and half of all hands are weaker than Q7...

[Nomad84]

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I think it's because it took a computer to prove that it was the Median hand, meaning half of all hands are stronger than Q7 and half of all hands are weaker than Q7...

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I've also heard it said on TV that computer simulations show that Q7o is the median hand. I assumed this meant in a heads up situation preflop.

[VickreyAuction]

I heard that Q7o is the median hand in a heads up PF situation. But it comes out at a 51.766% favorite against a random hand on PokerTracker.

[SocalHoldEem]

q4 is the true median hand according to andy beal's simulations

[Rick Nebiolo]

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I heard that Q7o is the median hand in a heads up PF situation. But it comes out at a 51.766% favorite against a random hand on PokerTracker.

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That was what I heard years ago. But I just downloaded version 1.2 of Pokerstove and my results agree with yours. As mentioned elsewhere Q4 offsuit does come closer to 50/50 heads up using these tools.

In my deep storage are some old poker books, including a book of holdem computer simulations by someone I think was named Mike Barry. If memory serves he wrote his own shuffling algorithm and computer simulator and his book came up with the term first (or readers of his book did). If so, it's possible his algorithm and simulator (this was about 1985) were flawed compared to Pokerstove and even Caro's Probe.

~ Rick

[Man of Means]

I got J5s coming in at 49.987% equity against a random hand on Poker Stove. Closer to median than Q5o's 50.120%

[Nomad84]

50% equity against a random hand is not the same thing as the median hand. Finding the median hand would involve finding the equity of each possible starting hand against a random hand, then ranking them in order of equity. The 85th one would be the median since there are 169 possible starting hands.

[uDevil]

FWIW, from CardPlayer:

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computer hand: Q-7. Comes from an apocryphal story that "someone" did an extensive computer simulation of hold'em hands in which those two cards appeared most frequently in the flop, or, in some stories, among the downcards. The simulation was atypical, however, because the chances are the same for any two cards of different ranks.

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