This definitely belongs in newb's section:

Guy comments o my article that JJ is not the 4th best starting hand (apparently I've been given some false information), but is in fact the 13th best starting hand


Thank god there are people like this to correct my mistakes, I can only hope to meet him at the tables one day where I can thank him over and over

Did you ask for an explanation of how he came to this conclusion?

It's difficult to belittle him, since he obviously reads my column

So, I posted this: There are only 3 hands better than JJ - QQ, KK, and AA. Not getting where you think it's the 13th best hand?

I presume they are thinking of AK, KQ etc etc?

Out of curiosity, I just put AKs against JJ. Sure enough, JJ is ahead as 54% to 46%

Of course it is! the only hands better are QQ/KK/AA

I'd love someone to rattle off 12 hands they think are better than JJ, KT perhaps???

Maybe he is thinking AcAd, AcAh, AcAs, etc.

"Best" is a relative term. JJ is the fourth best in terms of starting rank... but one-to-one comparison isn't all there is to it. I'd rather have JJ in an AK vs. JJ all-in, but I'd rather have AK vs. QQ than JJ vs. QQ.

I think JJ is 5th best in terms of odds of winning a showdown against two random cards. I seem to remember that it goes AA, KK, AKs, QQ, AKo, JJ... but even that has little to do with actual hand worth...

K4o does pretty well against two random cards, but it's a crap starting hand. 87s is just okay against two random cards, but it's a much better starting hand because it's more likely to give you a hand where you know where you're at. Rating hands by how easy they are for you to play is kind of subjective... I do pretty well with 64s, 98o, etc., but tend to overplay 99-JJ when I flop an overpair... other people find the mid pairs easy to play, but get themselves in trouble with KJs/QTs type hands.

Another way to rate hands would be to take a large sample of lots of different players' stats with different hands and rank them by money won/lost... that would vary considerably depending on stakes, I think. Weak aces probably turn a small profit when played by good players, but I bet they lose money for microstakes donks.

Maybe this guy read an article somewhere in which some pro ranked starting hands by how profitable he thinks they are? Makes sense that there'd be ten hands he likes better than JJ, since JJ can often be a trouble hand post-flop?

Jacks are the 4th best starting hand overall

That's the line he was commenting on. Seems pretty straightforward to me

There is no way a solid player is making more money with 12 other hands than JJ. And incidentally, the article is on misplaying JJ

Makes sense that there'd be ten hands he likes better than JJ, since JJ can often be a trouble hand post-flop?

Yeah whenever I have got 100k+ hand databses it pretty quickly starts to look like AA KK QQ AKs JJ AK TT etc

I don't think anyone really plays 78s more profitbaly than JJ over a significant sample.

I heard that the starting hand rank of JJ was lowered as a result of all the beats they get on Stars. Something about unquantifiable numbers changing the mathematics.