Jacks

When you're playing Texas hold'em, there's no starting hand that'll give you more grief than a pocket pair of jacks. They're a blessing and a curse, and how to play them is not as easy as it might appear at first glance. While jacks are tough enough to play in a limit cash game, where all a loss can cost is a few more chips, that pair of hooks is doubly dicey in a tournament, particularly if it's no-limit. That's when this hand can be a royal pain, and if you act rashly, you can lose all of your chips and wind up watching the remainder of the tournament from the rail.

In limit hold'em, most players' default reaction is to raise with a pair of jacks, regardless of their position in the betting order. After all, it's one of the best hands you can be dealt before the flop, and if one of your opponents has a better hand and reraises, oh well; you'll probably lose a few chips, but it won't be enough to really cripple you unless you find yourself trapped in a raising war, and then it's probably time to bail out.

But in a tournament, you always have to consider how deep your stacks are, whether you can afford to call a reraise, and how many of your chips you want to put at risk on a hand that's as vulnerable as it is strong. Sometimes, pocket jacks are a no-brainer to play, particularly if you're short-stacked and looking to make a stand. If that's the case, just push all of your chips into the pot and sweat it out from there. If you have got most of the chips at the table, it's not all that tough a decision, either. Just force any short stack who already entered the pot to commit all of his chips or fold to your raise. After all, you can afford the loss, and even if your jacks aren't the best hand right now, they can always improve and it won't cost you any more chips to play it out.

But let's not concern ourselves with these extreme situations; after all, with loads of chips or only a precious few, you're going to play the hand. It's all of those other situations that occasionally make for tough sledding.

I used Mike Caro's Poker Probe to run some cold simulations designed to give me an idea of the intrinsic strength of a pair of jacks. Then, I used that information as a departure point in thinking about how to play a pair of jacks in various circumstances.

Most hold'em hands are flop-dependent as well as front-loaded, and jacks are no exception. For the price of one small bet, hold'em players get to see 71 percent of their hand, and that's often a bargain if they can see the flop cheap with vulnerable hands.

I simulated nine players at the table, and gave one of them the J J. In the first simulation (each was run 500,000 times), I specified a board of 10 6 2, which minimized possible straights and flushes, and did not contain an overcard to the jacks. With a situation this favorable, that pair of jacks went on to win more than 20 percent of the confrontations, while each of the other eight random hands won approximately 10 percent of the time. Tie hands are folded into these percentages by Poker Probe, with the software allocating the entire pot for a win, half the pot for a two-way tie, one-third of the pot for a three-way tie, all the way down to a nine-way tie.

But what if you've raised with a pair of jacks and an overcard falls? Another simulation was run in which the board was Q 6 2. Now, an overcard is on the board and the pair of jacks won only 14 percent of the confrontations, while the eight random hands won approximately 10.75 percent of the encounters. The pair of jacks lost some equity because of the overcard, which benefited each of the other random hands.

In a third simulation, two overcards appeared on the board and the random hands won more than 11 percent of the time, while the pair of jacks won only 9.6 percent of the encounters, making a pair of jacks a distinct underdog when confronting a two-overcard board.

In the fourth and final simulation, three overcards appeared on the board and the jacks won nearly 13 percent of the time, compared to a little less than 11 percent for the random hands. Actually, the pocket jacks didn't really beat the random hands outright, but they did split the pot far more frequently.

Let's summarize these results, then put some thought to the data and see what inferences we can draw from it.

In the real world, few players will call all bets until the river without a good hand. Because each pot figures to have fewer than nine players, a pair of jacks will win a higher percentage of hands than are shown in this cold simulation. Of course, any other hand that calls the flop increases its chances of winning, too. Nevertheless, in a fixed-limit cash game, that pair of jacks is probably going to be involved in the pot regardless of what transpires before the flop, while the lesser hands really amount to a changing cast of characters – probably two or three opponents most of the time – not the aggregate eight other hands that are shown in this simulation.

Jacks are very dependent on the flop, and a pair of jacks will be lucky to see a flop without an overcard. In cold simulations, all overcards are equally dangerous as far as the jacks are concerned, but it's quite different in the real word, since most of your opponents will play many more hands with an ace in it than other big cards. You see players call all the time with A-7 and the A 5, but you'll seldom see your opponents turning up hands like Q-7 and the Q 5.

The implications are clear. If you hold a pocket pair of jacks in a real poker game, be a lot more wary of a flop containing an ace than one that contains a king or a queen as its lone overcard. Better yet, if you can thin out the field with a raise before the flop, facing a one-overcard board isn't nearly as daunting. When you're heads up or facing two opponents, chances that the lone overcard helped your opponents are less than they would be if you were involved in a family pot, where you can safely assume that any flop will help someone.

If you look at a flop with two or three overcards, the situation is even worse than it appears from the simulated data. After all, anyone betting into a big board is likely to have part of it, and anyone calling a bet into this kind of board either has part of the flop or a draw to a big hand. While one overcard on the flop can be dangerous, two or three of them can cut your jacks off at the knees.

In a no-limit tournament, jacks are very vulnerable, particularly if you can ill afford to squander chips on a hand that's a coin flip at best. Of course, if you are short-stacked and have to make a stand or face being eaten alive by the blinds, go ahead and push all in. When you must make a stand, a pair of jacks is a lot better holding than most hands. Moreover, you'll attract fewer callers in a no-limit tournament than you might in a cash game, so your pair of jacks figures to have a higher survivability quotient. But even if you are called by a hand like A-Q, you are still a small favorite.

But if you're not at that point where risking all of your chips is really the only course of action, you'll probably make a "standard" raise with jacks, fully cognizant that you might have to abandon ship if the flop is unfavorable and there's significant action in front of you.

When push comes to shove, the question really isn't about the intrinsic strength or weakness of a pair of jacks, it's more an issue of how the texture of the flop and the betting action of your opponents impacts the quality of your hand and affects your decision about whether to keep playing. So, set your antenna to full power whenever you're dealt a pair of jacks; there's going to be a lot of information available to you, and your job is to separate the signal from the noise and act accordingly.

Raise your game with Lou Krieger at http://www.royalvegaspoker.com. His newest book, Winning Omaha/8 Poker, is available through Card Player.