My two cents on pocket aces

Pocket aces would seem like a particularly strong hand at hold ’em, but of late, I have lost more than my fair share of hands with pocket aces. Mostly because I let weaker hands develop right up to the river. Pretty low probability, that, because most pots are won with pairs, but you learn to never disregard the odds against you, they are always real, especially when the table is large and blinds small. I’ve learnt that slow betting with pocket aces isn’t the best of ideas, more so at the larger tables. I wouldn’t say go all in, but do raise high enough before the flop so that the call has negative expected value for weaker hands. The objective here would seem like a deviation from the fundamental theorem, but this is a special hand. Make half the table fold before the flop and you’ve already made your pair a lot stronger. And for rest of the hand, if the aces don’t develop, never let it slip from your mind that it is only a pair. You are beat if you are beat, so don’t indulge recklessly, even with pocket aces. This is the theory so far, IMHO. Consume with a bit of salt.


Leave a Reply


You are commenting using your account. Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture


Facebook photo


Google+ photo


Connecting to %s