Suckout? Or Does It Just Suck?

I am a big fan of Hoy's blog. In fact, his musings are one of my favorite things to look forward to while lurking in the poker blogosphere. However, part of his post today included a rant where the assertions from a probability standpoint were, at best, inconsistent and applied incorrectly. He asked for direct comments, but since I am trying to see actually how long it takes for someone to find this piece of garbage without me basically publishing my profile publically in someone's comments, I'll do the next best thing. And here it is.

You can read the full text and commentary of the hand over at his place, but to summarize, he and another player got it all-in preflop AQ vs. JJ. An ace came on the flop, but JJ rivered a set. Now, his assertion is that the player with jacks sucked out mightily on the river, but it was in no way a resuck since AQ had essentially won the race on the flop and subsequently lost to a two outer on the river.

The problem, as I see it, is saying that AQ won the 52/48 race on the flop, but not taking into account that you just can't equate the overall probability of winning the race with the individual conditional probabilities for each event... flop, turn, and river. Sure, coming back from being a slight dog is much more probabilisitc than hitting your set on the river, but it's an apples-to-oranges comparison.

Even though AQ is 48% to win over JJ after seeing all 5 cards, it DOES need to improve in order to win. And, in fact, AQ will only improve on the flop about 1/3 of the time. Additionally, since JJ will improve to a set about 1/8 of the time, AQ will only be ahead in the race about 30% of the time after the flop. To me, this is a far cry from winning the race ON THE FLOP. Some would argue that catching a card as a 70% dog is sucking out. I don't completely disagree.

In the suck/re-suck paradigm, the re-suck is almost always more unlikely than the original suckout. That does not change the fact that you cannot say that you overcame odds based on seeing all 5 cards using only the first three. Those odds are what they are for a reason, and they take the results of the turn and river more into account than people really like to believe. A third jack will come about 20% of the time. The better hand won the race. The board was just ordered in one of the more unlikely combinations containing both an A (with 3 left in the deck) and a J (with 2 left in the deck).

Does the universe care whether it comes in the door or waits until the last card? Absolutely not. Does it hurt like a bitch that it waited until the river when you would have really preferred to get it over with on the flop if it was coming? You better believe it. In the grand scheme of things, it was not a suckout as a 52/48 coin flip can never be one when both hands are all-in preflop. Emotionally, though, continuing through the tradition of dealing 3, then 1, and a final 1 just feels so much worse when you think you have come from behind after the flop.

You could always deal all 5 cards down, mix them up a bit so you don't know which would have been which, and then flip them all at once. The results will be 52/48 no matter what. But that wouldn't be so good for T.V. now would it?

Just my .02 for no one to read but me.