Regular
players know that this happens way too much.
You finally
catch a strong high hand like aces full or so, against a couple
of other seemingly high hands. You win the high side easily
only to find that you have to split with another player who
hung in there to make an eight low on the river. By this he
managed to turn your expected swooper into a split of two almost
profitless hands.
"Well" you
say, "that's tough. The game is called high-low split".
That's true,
but our objective is to win without splitting and my point
is that it seems like the low hand that rains on your parade
is hardly ever a good low but usually just a crummy eight!
. . We all understand that naturally there are more eight lows
than others because there are more ways to make an eight then
a wheel, six, or seven. . . However, it might surprise many
to learn that almost two thirds (62.5%)
of all the qualifying low hands are eights. . In the world
of low hands, eights are indeed everywhere.
By using
the denominations of Ace through 8, that in combinations of
five, make up all of the 56 possible low hands, we have this
many of each:
5 Low . .
. . 1 combination . . . 1.8% of all lows
6 Low . .
. . 5 combinations . . 8.9% of all lows
7 Low . .
. 15 combinations . . 26.8% of all lows
8 Low . .
. 35 combinations . . 62.5% of all lows
Notice that
there are a lot more eight lows than all the other lows combined.
Now if you
happen to get involved in a battle of eights with another player
and have a "slick" eight
(85 or 84), you have an 85% chance to win low. . More than half
of the eights are 87s followed by a lot of 86s.
So much for
the eights. Since we see so many of them, it doesn't hurt to
know them well.::
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