Copyright 2005 Full
Tilt Poker
November 14, 2005
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Poker Lesson: Big Slick: A Slippery
Hand
Author: Rafe Furst
I often tell people that short-term results are
not a reason to change how they play, but I likewise encourage
them to use any excuse to study and analyze their game.
Recently, a player on Full Tilt Poker lamented that
he'd gone broke with A-K in his last several tourneys, and he
suspected that he was doing something wrong. A few questions revealed
that he was getting knocked out fairly early in these tournaments
when he put his A-K up against pocket pairs for all his chips.
It's a familiar lament.
Many people fall in love with A-K pre-flop in No-Limit
Hold 'em because they know that they can rarely be much worse
than 50-50 to win the hand if they get all of their money in heads
up. While this is true, the reverse is also true: Rarely will
you be much better than 50-50 to win an all-in showdown.
So why is A-K considered such a great starting hand?
Folding equity. Under the right conditions, you can increase your
pot equity to well over 50% by getting your opponents to fold
in situations where they shouldn't. Here's a scenario: Blinds
are $200-$400 and Jen Harman (who has $12,000 in front of her)
raises to $1,200 from middle position with pocket tens. You re-raise
all-in for $6,000 with A-K from the button. It is difficult for
Jen to call here because, even though she suspects you might have
A-K, she knows you could also make that play with A-A, K-K, Q-Q
or J-J.
Does she want to play for half of her stack on what
figures to be, at best, a 57% favorite? You, on the other hand,
are confident that unless she has one of two hands (AA or KK),
you are no worse than 43% to win, even if she calls. Unless Jen
picks up on a tell, she is forced to fold a hand that is actually
better than your A-K by a slight margin. Not only that, but you've
also made her give up all the extra chips in the pot (mostly hers)
that were giving her great odds to make a call. Variants of this
scenario come up all the time in
No-Limit Hold 'em.
By putting your opponents in a bind where they must
first call you and then have to beat you in a race, you can turn
a hand that is 50% to win with all the money in pre-flop and turn
it into a hand that is a 75% favorite or better.
The mistake many inexperienced players make is not
giving their opponents a chance to fold. They look down to find
A-K and can't wait to get all their money in the middle and race.
But as we can see from the example above, the power of A-K pre-flop
really comes from the "folding equity" you gain when
you can make your opponent lay down a hand they would not lay
down if they could see your hole cards.
Here are three keys to getting the most out of A-K
pre-flop:
1) Jam with A-K, but don't call all-in with it.
2) Raise enough when you have A-K to give your opponents
a chance to fold.
3) Don't raise so much that the only hands that
are willing to call you are the hands that have you dominated
(A-A and K-K).
To execute these plays properly, it is important
to keep in mind the size of the blinds relative to your opponents'
stacks and your own stack. A-K loses much of its value when your
opponents are short-stacked or pot committed -- and therefore
unlikely to lay down a hand -- or when the blinds are very small
relative to everyone's stacks. These principles apply to both
ring game and tournament play. Getting back to my friend who kept
busting early in tourneys with A-K...
In the early stages of a tournament, the blinds
are very small relative to everyone's stack size. This contributed
to his breaking of each of the three rules:
(1) He was calling his opponents' all-in raises
when they had their expected pocket pairs.
(2) He was jamming only after his opponents were
pot-committed.
(3) After getting gun shy from having his A-K cracked
a few times, he made his raises way too big to "protect"
his hand, but then was only getting called once he was beat.
This is one of those instances where looking at
short-term results can lead to long-term improvements.
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