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The Playability of No-Limit Hold'em Hands
We don't really seem to have a basic post anywhere about starting hand playability, so I'm going to cover the basics. Playability helps us to determine the relative value of a hand's worth before the flop so that we know whether or not playing it is going to be a good idea.
Three Ways to Make a Hand
There are basically three ways to make a hand in poker. You can make pair-based hands, flush-based hands or straight-based hands. Along these lines, we have our three ways to measure playability:
When stacks are shallow, high card value tends to matter more. When stacks get deeper, suitedness and connectedness start to matter more.
Some Different Examples
Suited connectors are good hands with deep stacks because they hold both suitedness and connectedness. The higher the suited connector, the more high card value it holds, and the more valuable it is as a result.
A hand like AK doesn't have as much connectedness as a hand like JT because JT will make more straights. However, the high card value of AK makes it superior to JT.
Something like Q8o or J6o is the one type of hand that new players tend to severely overvalue. These hands have just a very small amount of high card value with no suitedness or connectedness to really mention.
On the other hand, new players also tend to really overvalue something like 43s or T5s. These hands do have suitedness (but in a weak way since they don't make strong flushes), but they have no significant connectedness, and they have no high card value at all.
Playability vs. Equity
Pre-flop equity doesn't really tell you a lot when it comes to the practical playability of the hand. Something like J5o will have a pre-flop equity advantage over something like 76s, but 76s will be much more playable, and you'll be able to get a lot more value out of it in practical play. The moral here is to not use pre-flop equity as a be-all, end-all because it's only the primary consideration when a ton of money is going in pre-flop (like more than one-third of the starting stacks).
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