so i'm not a moron after all!!!

warning: this post will be intensely boring to those of you not interested in poker theory.

This post on 2+2 interested and frustrated me. The poster presents a problem: KQ suited has a little more equity (win/tie likelihood) than A10 off-suit when you put it up against any two random hold 'em hands. (KQ: 47.1% / A10: 44.3%) However, the equity values reverse when the same two hands are calling a raise from someone holding any of the top 30 percent of possible hold 'em hands. (A10: 56.5% / KQ: 54%) His question was: Which would you rather be the raiser with, and which hand is more valuable?

I had two ideas about this situation.

1. I would rather have A10, because if the other guy called my raise with an A with a lower kicker, I would be killing him, whereas if he called my raise with the same cards and I had KQ, I would be in a pretty bad spot. Lots of tournament players at the $10 level would gleefully call all sorts of bets with A-anything, particularly at late stages of the game.

2. The difference in this case is SO MARGINAL that I would probably just raise with KQ anyways and not even think about it.

I wanted to post these thoughts, but they would not come out of my fingers in an intelligent way. Every time I rewrote my reply, I was afraid that I was missing some sort of deep expression of poker theory, and that the 1.5 to 3 percent gap in equity differences was the sort of thing that makes a big difference over the long term. Not wanting to sound as stupid as I was certain that I was, I went with the "say nothing" option.

Opting not to reply, the thread refreshed itself, this time with two replies from two of the most prolific posters on 2+2. The first post made my second point, and the second post made my first, both in ways that were much clearer than what I had come up with. My confidence restored, I threw in my $0.02, but mostly so I could make a little joke about slicing a tomato.

Moral of the story: My instincts aren't so bad after all, and 2+2 is freakin' sweet.