Riding Big Slick

You are playing in the early or middle stages of a no-limit hold'em tournament. You have been playing rather tight and have accumulated somewhat more than the average amount of chips. In an early position, you pick up a good hand, A-K, often called "big slick." But before you can decide exactly how much you intend to raise, the player in first position in front of you goes all in. For example, let's say the blinds are $150-$300 and the all-in raiser makes it $2,000 to play. In this situation, would you call all in or fold?

Most expert players will answer, "It all depends." It depends mostly on what you know about the raiser. But it might also depend on the situation and whether circumstances dictate that you should be willing to gamble. A good player would normally not want to call if it was likely that he would find himself on the wrong side of a coin flip.

The first time I ran into this situation, many years ago, I called happily – only to find that my opponent had pocket kings and I was a big underdog. Over the years, I have folded big slick many times when I have judged that the raiser is a very solid player. One such time, Linda Johnson was watching me. She took one look at the raiser and whispered, "I'm with you," after I had folded. The raiser had pocket aces. But note that even when the raiser turns up with a small pocket pair, you still are a slight underdog if you call.

Last year I wrote a contract bridge book that presented a hundred difficult bridge bidding situations in which the optimum results were achieved by employing poker concepts (such as pre-empting, bluffing, and two-way actions). The above big-slick poker situation is somewhat analogous to the following bridge situation: You hold a (13-card) bridge hand with flat distribution that contains one ace and one king and no other honor cards (facecards and aces). Your partner opens the bidding with one of a suit and your opponent on your right bids four spades. Would you double or pass?

When playing against an aggressive or "frisky" player, you should double, but when playing against a "rock" who usually pre-empts only when he has tricks in hand (for example, a good eight-card suit and possibly more), you should probably pass. There is not much value in doubling if the most likely good result would be a one-trick set.

Now, suppose instead that the all-in raiser has bet less than one-quarter of your stack. For example, with blinds of $150-$300, the player in first position goes all in for $1,000 and you have the biggest stack at your table, say $5,000. What would you do?

Of course, you should at least call. Since the raiser is only a hand away from the blinds, which would seriously deplete his remaining chips, he may well be making a desperate try with a mediocre hand. The main question here is, do you want to try to muscle the pot by making a larger reraise? When heads up against a non-pocket pair, you rate to win about two-thirds of the time. But if there is a third player, especially one with a pocket pair, you will win the hand far less than half the time.

Perhaps the main consideration here is how many sizable stacks are sitting behind you. And, have any of these bigger stacks "telegraphed" interest in folding or in playing. In the above example, if there are only two stacks behind you of more than $2,500, and one of them looks like he is about to toss his cards away, by making a big reraise, you are probably risking less than another $1,000 and are substantially increasing your chances of winning the original $1,000 investment.

Of course, if one of the bigger stacks does call your big reraise, you might lose more than $1,000 depending on how big the stack is that calls your reraise. But since you are riding big slick, you should have a very good chance of winning unless you happen to run into pocket aces or kings, which is quite unlikely.

The bottom line is that your overall expected value in this situation is undoubtedly increased and probably optimized by making the big reraise before the flop. Not only might you force a small pair to fold (which would be a slight favorite to beat you), you might win extra chips if you get called. Also note that the additional chips that you are risking by reraising before the flop might well be lost after the flop to a hand that called because you didn't reraise but would have folded if you had reraised.

Experienced tournament players know that although big slick is certainly a very good hand, unfortunately, it is often a very vulnerable and dangerous holding after the flop. There is much to be said for betting it big before the flop.