Saturday, April 25, 2009

Powers

Would you rather be able to see your opponent's hand or know the five board cards ahead of time, asks Memphis MOJO.

If you knew the board ahead of time, you'd be able to figure out how strong your hand would be and whether it would be worth it to try to suck out.

But if you could see your opponent's hole cards, you'd know the relative strength of your hand against his at all times.

It seems to me that the second option is far superior.

When you can see your opponent's cards, you suddenly have complete information in the hand. You could reraise and shove preflop with slightly better hands like A2o against KQs. You could rebluff your opponents' bluffs. You'd never lose money against a higher set or higher flush because it would become the easiest fold in the world.

We've seen the value of being a superuser from the UB/AP scandals. With that sort of card omnipotence, I'd never lose if I were careful enough.

2 comments:

Shrike said...

Give me knowledge of my opponent's hole cards every time. As the superuser scandal demonstrated, you will never lose when you can act with complete information about your opponent's holdings. The trick would be to cheat intelligently so as not to get caught, which is something the superuser villains signally failed to do.

-PL

Memphis MOJO said...

I agree with both shrike and the SPG.

I guess the best thing (financially) is if you could know both, but then what fun would it be?