Posts Tagged ‘aces’
July 21st, 2009
QQ – You will flop one or more overcards without another queen on the board 31.1% of the time. If there are a lot of players already in the pot, you’re not going to knock anyone out by raising. If six players have already called, then they have a total of twelve cards among them. It’s very likely that’s there’s an ace and a king among those twelve cards, so I generally do not raise in late position with pocket queens. I like to limp in for one bet. If an ace or a king comes on the flop and there’s a bet, I can easily throw the hand away.
I want to emphasize that you’re not really playing against just the one player who bet. You’re playing against those twelve cards the others are holding. If you’re not sure you understand what I mean, try this quick and easy exercise:
Pull two queens from a full deck of cards. Shuffle the rest of the cards well, and then look at the first twelve cards off the top of the deck. Is there an ace or a king in those cards? I just performed this exercise twenty times and there was an ace or a king nineteen out of those twenty times. I don’t know if twenty trials is a large enough sample to be statistically valid, but it’s good enough for me, particularly since this nineteen out of twenty seems to coincide with my actual experiences in years of play. Kings and aces among these cards suggest that at least one of those players who just called may have an overcard to your queen.
JJ – You will get an overcard and no jack 47% of the time. For that reason, I usually like to see the flop as cheaply as possible, because I know that I’ll often be throwing it away often after the flop. There are two exceptions. If I’m in late position and only the blinds are in, I will raise to steal the blinds. If everyone has called and it’s raised, I will reraise to build a pot, since I have great drawing odds.
1010 – The best advice I can give you is to play this hand even more carefully than you play pocket jacks. You will get an overcard and no 10 60% of the time. If there’s no overcard on the flop, one will come on the turn or river 57% of the time. You usually have to flop another 10 or be drawing to the high end of a straight to have a good hand after the flop with pocket 10s.
99, 88, 77, 66, 55, 44, 33, 22 -1 put all of these pairs in the same category because each one has an incredibly high probability of flopping an overcard without flopping a set. The lower your pocket pair is, the more all caveats apply, and the luckier you have to get on the flop. If you stay in, see the flop as cheaply as you can.
There’s no law that says you have to play the hand anyway. I routinely fold pocket 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s if it’s raised pre-flop and I respect the raiser. You can raise to steal the blinds in late position with these hands, but your decision to do so should depend on your ability to play and read your opponent after the flop, if he calls.sports betting
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Tags: aces, blinds, casino poker, poker
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July 20th, 2009
In the long run, if you're a good enough player, any profit you make will come from the mistakes your opponents make when they play against you. One typical mistake your opponents will make is to play too many hands. Poker theory says that the best way for you to take advantage of that error is also to play a few more hands than average. Don't play too many more hands, though, just a few more.
I'm now going to show you another starting hand strategy. This new strategy is designed to be fairly conservative, safe, easy-to-understand, a little more fun to play, and, most importantly, a little more profitable than the other strategy you learned in the last chapter. Another advantage you'll have is that once you've learned this new strategy, you will then know two different starting hand strategies, so you'll have options when playing before the flop. You won't always play the same way with the same cards, so your opponents won't always be sure of what you have, which increases the likelihood that they'll make mistakes. Remember, your opponents' mistakes mean more profit for you.
The new way of choosing your starting hands that you're about to learn is pretty easy because it's based on understanding your play rather than memorizing certain groups of hands. Let's take a look at your second strategy for playing before the flop.
For the most part, you're going to consider playing with these three types of hands:
1. Pocket Pairs. You can now play virtually all pocket pairs. You can even see the flop with the small pairs under the right conditions, as I'll explain in a moment.
2. Suited Aces. Hands like A484 or even A424 qualify under this category.
3. Hands that add up to 20 or 21. An ace counts as 11, face cards count as 10, and all other cards are worth their face value. For example, AJ is 21 points, KQis 20 points, and A9 is 20 points. A48* is not a playable hand because it is not suited and does not add up to twenty.
There are forty-eight pocket pairs below a pair of 10s (pairs of 10 and above fall in the third category). There are twenty-eight hands that are suited aces that do not add up to 20 or 21, and there are 206 hands that add up to 20 or 21. This total constitutes 21.3% of all possible hands. That's twice as many hands as you were playing using the other system.
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Tags: aces, pocket pairs, poker