Play– A Poker Game
In most poker books the part about how to play each hand is usually at the front of the book. I deliberately chose to put this part at the end because I thought it important to first explain all of the elements that go into the playing of a hand.
When I advise you how to playa certain hand in a certain position you will already have a good understanding of the concepts of position, raising, check-raising, slowplaying, bluffing, semi-bluffing, reading hands, tells, and adjusting to game conditions. This final chapter is meant to help you bring it all together in your mind so that you can see how all of these abstract concepts work in actual practice.
I am going to give you some specific advice about how to play specific hands and I’ll try to tell you everything that you’ll need to know about the hand. I don’t want you to say a few years from now, “Boy, I wish he’d told me that could happen when I had Ad. Ac. in the pocket,” or whatever the hand is. As I said in the introduction, I’ll try to tell you everything that I wish someone had told me when I first started playing this game.
I am not going to discuss all 169 different possible hands.
I believe that if you’ve read the book this far, you will already know how to play hands like Kd. 5s. Js. 3c. 7c. 2d. and hands like this. There is almost no difference in how you would play a flopped set of eights or sevens, and the same general principles hold when you flop the nuts, whether you’re holding Ad. Qh. or Tc. 9c. There is also almost no difference in how We will concentrate on those hands that have a positive expectation and you would at least see the flop with most of the time. Here goes:
1. Ad. Ah.
A pair of Aces in the pocket is the best hand you can have in Texas Hold’ em. There is no other hand that will win more money hand in and hand out in the long run. You should usually raise pre-flop every time you get them from any and all positions and you should definitely reraise if possible. If you’re not willing to put in the maximum number of bets with the best hand in Texas Hold’ em, then you should ask yourself why you’re even playing the game. Anyone who calls you is definitely taking long odds to beat you. Here is a list of things to keep in mind regarding Aces in the pocket:
A. You are about a 4 to 1 favorite over any other player holding a pocket pair if you both play to the river. You will flop another Ace 10.5% of the time and you will flop a full house about 1 % of the time.
B. You are a 2 to 1 favorite against a single opponent on a straight or a flush draw. You are a slight favorite over two players who are trying to make straights or flushes against you. If you hold Ac, As. and flop two more c S or .s s, you will make a backdoor flush only 3.33% of the time.
C. Most low limit players who have Ah. Ac, in the pocket will raise before the flop and then carefully watch each player call the raise in turn. He will often actually bounce his head up and down in a clockwise motion as the action goes around the table. He’s doing this to make sure that each player puts the correct amount of money into what he thinks of as “his” pot. This is a reliable tell in low limit.
D. Most players will call all bets and raises on the flop when they hold As. Ad. in the pocket, even when they know that they’re beat. This is especially true if the player is on a rush, is winning, or is drinking.
