Why is it, more often than not in all ins, the worst hand seems to win a very high per cent of the time, particularly if three are in?

The answer depends on what you mean…If you mean that hands with a 20% chance always win twice as often as that in a three way all-in, then you’re mistaken because that’s not actually the case. Over a very large number of hands (commonly call the long run), that hand in that situation will win 1 in 5 according to the law of large numbers. Unfortunately, we don’t operate in a sample of large numbers – we only see our own hands, and that’s why it looks wrong to us.

Nonetheless, I think there’s something else at the root of your question, specifically about “if three are (all) in”. Let’s take a common example: It’s late in a sit-and-go tournament, and the button pushes all-in with the JT of spades, hoping to steal the blinds. Let’s say the small blind pushes all-in because they have AhQd, and they figure to have the best hand. But you’re in the big blind, and you look down at the AcKh, and seeing that you’ve got a good hand and great odds to call all-in, you put all your chips in the middle.

How often do you expect to win this? 60% of the time maybe? Only 50% because it’s three-way? Ask yourself, in the heat of battle, what kind of odds do you give yourself to win in this situation. Maybe this contributes to the feeling that the weakest hand wins way too often, because sometimes one will overvalue some hand or another.

In actuality, you have a 40.96% chance to win in this situation, and the jack-ten has a 36.44% chance, meaning your edge on them is less than 5%. If you ran into this hand 50 times in your life, you’d win about 21 times and the jack ten would win 18. That’s only 3 more hands in 50 dealt out – hardly constitutes a dominant hand. But take the ‘third’ hand out of the scenario, and all of a sudden the AK is 51/49, and a favourite. While still not a dominant hand, it is in a much better situation (being a 3 to 2 favourite, instead of a 3 to 2 dog).

It should become immediately clear why the ‘worst’ hand (JT) can become a potential winner. When the AQ is dominated by the AK, and is sharing cards (the ace), not only does the AQ end up with little chance to win, the AK loses a bit of edge because of the shared cards.

This will often happen in multiway pots: hands which are favoured over the other hands individually, will not be a favourite to win in a multiway pot.

Also, this raises another issue I’d like to draw your attention to: dynamic hand value. Which hands are favoured, and which hands you want to hold, depend on what your opponent(s) hold. Hence, the true value of hands is dynamic. For instance, if it were a heads-up game you would naturally favour pocket tens over holding AK. But if the pot is three way, and you learn that each of your opponents hold JJ and QQ, all of a sudden you’d give your left arm to have AK because your hand’s value is much higher in this situation. Make your opponents hole cards 99 and 88, then you would want TT again.

Sorry to ramble on about hands, but it’s good stuff to consider.

Good luck at the tables!
– Coach

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