I don't generally plug online poker sites here, but pokerroom.com has one of the coolest stats features I've seen -- they've measured the Expected Value of all poker hands based on over 100 million actual hands played in their room! Link (via teamfu.freeshell.org)

There's enough information in those stats to write at least a dozen posts. And I probably will.

What's so interesting about them is that they deal with how players actually play these hands, not what the theoretical EV of each hand is.

Which leads me to the point of this post. What do you think the most expensive hand is in 10-handed online hold'em (based on pokerroom.com's stats)? The one that costs players the most amount of money (on average) when dealt to them? Think about it for a second.

If you said something like 72 offsuit, or 23 suited, you're wrong. The most expensive hand in online hold'em is ace deuce offsuit. That's right. In fact, the five most costly hands in 10-handed online hold'em are A2, A3, A4, A5 and A6 offsuit! J5s is the next costliest, followed immediately by A7 and A8.

Based on those stats, the biggest hole in the average online player's game is playing ace-rag, and staying around with top pair no kicker. The other big holes in players' games are playing king-rag, and playing suited trash, especially in late position. When you think about it it's not all that surprising.

"Costliest" here refers to the lowest EV, averaged across playing from all positions in a 10-handed game. The costliest hands on the button are A2o and 84s, as well as A5, 83s, T3s, K2s and pocket deuces.

I'd love the ability to slice the statistics by the EV based on number of pre-flop callers. Then you could see how EV for marginal and drawing hands increases with the number of pre-flop callers.

It's important to note that these figures do not mean there's no way to profitably play these hands. They mean the average player does not play them profitably. However, I feel completely safe in saying that the moral of this post is that when it comes to Ax and Kx offsuit, and suited trash, even when in late position, just don't do it. It's nothing earth-shattering, but these stats should hammer home to you how much these hands cost the average player.

How did you decide which hands were worst? If you look at the hands sorted by EV, you have 4 "tied" at -.15, of which A2o is one.

Posted by: Dann Fuller on February 11, 2004 02:01 PM

The "total hands by EV" on the site is the total for all hands, all limits, and all numbers of players. A2o get significantly stronger as the number of opponents decreases.

I looked at the EV table for 10-handed games only and compared the average EV in 10-handed games, which shows A2o at -0.163, A3o at -0.156 and so on.

Posted by: jeremy on February 11, 2004 02:09 PM

i'm surprised you've never seen that before. it's been discussed ad nauseum on RGP.

that being said, i've found it very interesting to peruse as well. but i always bear in mind that these are the results of a site with a
large volume of not very good or average low limit holdem players. these stats aint the 15.30 game at the bellagio. :)

Posted by: iggy on February 11, 2004 06:50 PM

Valuable piece of advice. Something I could have learned yesterday!

Posted by: TheYeti on February 12, 2004 02:54 PM

When I first saw this chart, I did a double take when I saw 23s with a lower EV than 23o. Then a second later, I said 'Ahhh....' and came to the same realizations.

It's also useful to smack the notion of position into people, as it shows early position constantly performing worse than late position.

Personally I was a little surprised at QT and JT being -EV hands. Started playing those a little tighter afterward :)

Posted by: MJ on February 14, 2004 04:15 AM

MJ -- yeah, although do bear in mind what Iggy said, these are stats from average (read: poor) online players. The key with hands like QT and JT is to not overplay them when you flop top pair -- they're so fragile to hands like KT, AT, KQ and KJ -- all of which are likely to be playing for a single bet pre-flop. I don't play them in early position at all, and when I do play them in mid-late position am looking for a nice flop combined with not too much flop action. Too many players play them when they don't flop a pair or an open ender which is just not a winning proposition in no-foldem holdem.

Posted by: jeremy on February 16, 2004 01:36 PM

In response to the guy who was suprised about J T and Q T hurting people I think the best explanation is that while these are not terrible starting hands too many bad player's are far to willing to simply call large raises with them because they heard that alot of pros like those hands. They've become like cliches where idiots refuse to get rid of them even against a re-raise from a player in position. Secondly I was suprised to see that A rag was actually a low EV hand in computer poker because in my personal experience especially Party Poker loves to reward morons who call reraises those hands with give turn cards against AK and AQ. I'm glad to hear that every one else who puts people all in with top pair of aces and a king kicker doesn't constantly get killed on the turn or the river when some wack job pairs his five kicker.

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