Short-handed Play and Hand Values

If you play tournament poker, you’ll be aware that at the final stages when the blinds are big and there are few people left, individuals are forced to play very aggressively just to stay afloat.

More often than not, being in a pot means having to be prepared to commit all your chips.

Additionally you’ll often be faced with a situation where you have an opportunity to ‘steal’ the blinds, or alternatively where you have to defend the blinds. The latter also occurs in cash games!

What many people are not fully aware of is that hands change value in these scenarios – because many/most of the hands go to showdown, because your opponents playing requirements will change and because there is a maximum number of people who can partake in the pot.

What I’ll look at here is how valuable hands are in a heads-up situation where they go to showdown. I’ll then explore how these values change as we add an extra player or players. Finally I’ll look at some of the strategy implications in terms of going all-in or calling an all-in.

The first thing to say is that in most cases the change in strength is not THAT drastic. The 3 top hands in all scenarios are still AA, KK, QQ. 72o is still a rubbish hand! In simple terms what happens is that in short-handed poker high cards become relatively more important and suitedness and connectedness decrease in importance.

The top 20 percent of hands, heads-up to a showdown are:

Rank	Hand	Win %		Rank	Hand	Win %
1	AA	85.2		18	A9s	63.0
2	KK	82.4		19	ATo	62.9
3	QQ	79.9		20	KJs	62.6
4	JJ	77.5		21	A8s	62.1
5	TT	75.1		22	KTs	61.9
6	99	72.1		23	KQo	61.4
7	88	69.1		24	A7s	61.1
8	AKs	67.0		25	A9o	60.9
9	77	66.2		26	KJo	60.6
10	AQs	66.1		27	55	60.3
11	AKo	65.4		28	QJs	60.3
12	AJs	65.4		29	A8o	60.1
13	ATs	64.7		30	A6s	60.0
14	AQo	64.5		31	K9s	60.0
15	AJo	63.6		32	A5s	59.9
16	KQs	63.4		33	KTo	59.9
17	66	63.3		34	QTs	59.5

The bottom 20 are:

Rank	Hand	Win %		Rank	Hand	Win %
136	T2o	41.5		153	43s	38
137	64s	41.4		154	54o	37.9
138	54s	41.1		155	83o	37.5
139	83s	40.8		156	62s	37.5
140	75o	40.8		157	52s	37.5
141	94o	40.7		158	82o	36.8
142	82s	40.3		159	73o	36.6
143	65o	40.1		160	42s	36.3
144	73s	40.0		161	63o	35.9
145	93o	39.9		162	53o	35.8
146	84o	39.6		163	32s	35.1
147	63s	39.4		164	72o	34.6
148	53s	39.3		165	43o	34.4
149	92o	38.9		166	62o	34.0
150	74o	38.6		167	52o	33.9
151	72s	38.1		168	42o	32.5
152	64o	38.0		169	32o	31.2

Some comments: All these percentages refer to a single opponent with a random hand – e.g. you are the small blind and everyone folds to you.

Note the high value of pocket pairs down to 8’s, especially compared to hands that are worth a raise from early position at a full table – like AK, AQ etc.

Note also that the policy of many players in such situations – ‘take an ace and race’ isn’t completely justified on the cards.

There is a fairly sharp fall-off with the size of the kicker, especially for off-suit hands - .e.g. A2s ranks at 48, while A2o ranks at 60 (i.e. not even in the top third of hands). Conversely two high cards with some co-ordination, like KTo rank well.

For the worst hands, note that low suited connectors count for little more than their off-suit counterparts. Also note that the traditional ‘worst hand in poker’ is not the worst hand heads-up, although it is still pretty awful!

A simple guide to help recall these hands, might work as follows:

Hand Ranks	‘Rules’
Top 10%	Pairs down to 6’s. Ace-Big (except ten), KQs
Top 20%	Add 5’s, Ax down to 5 suited and 8 off-suit, K-Big down to 9 suited and ten off-suit, QJs, QTs
Bottom 20%	No ten or higher in the hand, Any other cards where the sum of the cards MINUS their difference is less than 12 (off-suit) or 10 suited.*

* e.g. 96o has a sum of 15 and a difference of 3. 15 minus 3 is 12 so this just about escapes the bottom 20%

Adding one extra player changes some things. Our table for the top hands now becomes:

Rank	Hand	Win %		Rank	Hand	Win %
1	AA	73.4		18	KTs	44.9
2	KK	68.9		19	A9s	44.8
3	QQ	64.9		20	ATo	44.4
4	JJ	61.2		21	KQo	44.4
5	TT	57.7		22	QJs	44.1
6	99	53.5		23	A8s	43.7
7	Aks	50.7		24	66	43.2
8	88	49.9		25	KJo	43.1
9	AQs	49.4		26	QTs	43.1
10	AKo	48.2		27	A7s	42.6
11	AJs	48.2		28	K9s	42.4
12	ATs	47.1		29	KTo	42.0
13	KQs	47.1		30	JTs	41.9
14	AQo	46.8		31	A9o	41.8
15	77	46.4		32	A5s	41.4
16	KJs	45.9		33	QJo	41.4
17	AJo	45.6		34	A6s	41.3

As we can see the values change slightly. The biggest ‘movers’ are pocket sevens which drop from 9 th to 15 th and sixes which drop from 17 th to 24 th with pocket fives dropping off our list, to 40 th place. AJo loses some value and AKs, AQs. A8o drops off the list while various other suited or connected (straights are now more likely to be a winning hand) hands move up – e.g. QJo and JTs.

One other thing worth mentioning is the ‘overlay’ i.e. by how much does our ‘equity’ against two random hands exceed our ‘baseline’ (if we held a random hand) ‘equity’. Note that the equity of the 34 th ranked hand is now 41.3/33.3 (i.e. 24%) rather than 59.5/50 (i.e. 19%).

What is happening is that in general as our numbers of opponents increases our strong hands become relatively stronger (although what constitutes a strong hand does change as we have seen) and our weak hands become weaker.

As for the weakest hands, there is less change in absolute ranking:

Rank	Hand	Win %		Rank	Hand	Win %
136	85o	26.5		153	74o	24.5
137	75o	26.5		154	72s	24.5
138	63s	26.5		155	84o	24.4
139	T4o	26.4		156	93o	23.9
140	83s	26.3		157	32s	23.6
141	73s	26.3		158	53o	23.3
142	J2o	26.2		159	92o	22.9
143	43s	26.2		160	63o	22.7
144	82s	25.8		161	83o	22.4
145	T3o	25.5		162	73o	22.4
146	52s	25.3		163	43o	22.3
147	54o	25.2		164	82o	21.7
148	62s	24.8		165	52o	21.3
149	T2o	24.7		166	62o	20.7
150	64o	24.7		167	42o	20.5
151	94o	24.6		168	72o	20.4
152	42s	24.6		169	32o	19.5

A simple guide to help recall these hands, might work as follows:

Hand Ranks	‘Rules’
Top 10%	Pairs down to 7’s. Ace-Big (except ten), KQs, KJs
Top 20%	Add 6’s, Ax down to 5 suited and 9 off-suit, Any two picture cards except QTo and JTo, K9s
Bottom 20%	No jack or higher in the hand, Any other cards where the sum of the cards MINUS their difference is less than 12 (off-suit) or 8 suited.*

In a follow-on article I’ll look at how we can make use of this information in game situations.