More on the "perfect hand"

A few years ago I came across a theory, in some online casino, the author had named "the perfect hand". I had known about the situation he described in it, before – since I had been playin poker for a few years by then - but I couldn't really define it as well as he did. Since I read his article I became somewhat adept at recognizing and what's more, sniffing out perfect hand situations in advance.
Playing poker online will never be the same with a generous rakeback deal.
The low side of a perfect hand, and pocket pairs is what I like to call a trap fate has laid for the player.
Pocket pairs are generally considered to be one of the best possible starting hands, especially if they're high, but I got used to considering them just about as valuable as any other offsuited pocket hand...
It is amazing how many times one needs to fold pocket aces.
But before I get into any further details let me specify what a perfect hand situation really is:
a perfect hand is not what it would appear to be. It's not aces full of kings, or a high straight flush or aces four of a kind with king kicker.. it can be pretty much any mid-level card combo, since the perfect hand is not about the hand itself, but more about the hands the other players have. A perfect hand is made by an almost similar but slightly inferior hand in posession of one of the opponents.
Let's say you and an opponent of yours both made it to the last betting round. You have nines full of eights, he has nines full of sevens. In this case you have the perfect hand. The guy with the slightly inferior full house will probably believe he'll be sweeping the table with his hand, and thus he'll be more than prepaired to call and even raise any bet you yourself might place.
Before you know it, the size of the pot explodes ( in no limit holdem, that is) the guy might even go all in on you, and eventually you shall win and he'll go on a tilt. Believe you me it ain't funny at all to be on the lower end of a perfect hand.
All right, I suppose by now you have a pretty good idea about what a perfect hand is... How do you smell it when you're stuck on the lopside of it?
All it really takes is experience... Many hours of play and you'll be figuring such situations out in notime.
Let's see another example: you have a 9 and 8 offsuit in the pocket, and you decide to try to see the flop on it as long as it doesn't get too expensive. The flop comes K-6-8 rainbow and you figure that's it, you're folding to the next significant raise. Only a fool would go on to the turn on a pair, especially a pair of 8s, or somebody who needs to raise no serious money on it. Contrary to what I usually do I follow through, because of the low raise I had to call and get hit with a 9 on the turn. Two pairs are extremely tricky and I wouldn't normally take them through to the river either. Since everybody at the table seems extremely passive, I go on to the river with my pairs. The river comes a 9 and I have a full house on the backdoor. My "perfect hand" alarm goes off though, because of the K on the board. I have nines full of eights and it isn't doing much to sooth me at all. I raise 100 as if askin: Who's got the king? I'm sure that out of the other six players around the table someone else has a nine too, and someone has a K as well. (The fact that there is only one K on the table, dramatically increases the possibility of someone having one of the remaining three in their pocket) everyone folds but this guy. His call is a message to me: " I have it" It's at this point I know for sure, I have the perfect hand pulled on me. Needless to say he takes the pot with a nines full of kings and I go on a tilt.
Now back to the pocket pairs: provided they're low, I think low pocket pairs are probably among the worse hands that can be dealt. Why is that? Since they're offsuit the possibility of a flush is out the window from the very start. Given the fact that you already have 2 of the cards in your pocket there are only two more left to look for on the flop turn river. Going for a straight gets a punch as well, so all you can hope for is that you either get dealt 1 or two more of the same value cards to pull out a 3 of a kind or a four of a kind ( the chances to get a 4 of a kind are absolutely meager, and even with a 3 of a kind you're not highly likely to win a pot) the other possibility is that you get 3 of a kind on the table thus drawing a full house. Happy? You shouldn't be. This is exactly the setup for a perfect hand situation, and you're about to get the worst of it... with your low pair, and with everybody being able to capitalize on the 3 of a kind on the board, the chances that your full house is the best hand are almost nil.
Next time think twice before happily going all in preflop on you pair of 5s....