Suited Aces - Part V

If anyone thinks it is easy to play poker, he probably doesn't know very much about the game. Many decisions are unclear; the proper play depends on a variety of factors. How many situations are there and what are the most important factors when deciding how to play suited aces? Let's examine the important factors first. Then, by multiplying all of the cases of each factor, we can calculate the number of situations.

First, there is the quality of your kicker. I already have mentioned that suited aces come in three flavors. The best suited aces are those in which the other card is big - king, queen, jack, or 10. These hands, especially suited A-K and A-Q, are premium hands. (In fact, A-K suited and A-Q suited are almost separate subcategories.) The second flavor contains a medium-sized card - 9, 8, 7, or 6. You should be aware that these hands are much weaker than the first group. The kickers are worse, and they can't make straights. For example, if your opponent has the A K and the board is K Q 6, the A 10 will win a little less than half the time, 46 percent. The A 9, which lacks the gutshot-straight possibility, wins about 37 percent of the time. The third flavor contains a small card - 5, 4, 3, or 2. With these hands, you are relying primarily on the potential to make a flush or straight. Counting king and queen kickers separately leads to five types of kickers.

In hold'em, position is very important and affects the play of many hands. In the case of suited aces and other speculative hands, position is extremely important. Good position will enable you to avoid playing all but the strongest hands when the pots are raised and reraised preflop. In bad position, you can easily get caught in the middle. Good position also will enable you to win more with your winners and lose less with your losers. We can divide position into early (bad), middle (mediocre), and late (good). The blinds add two special cases, in that your post-flop position is bad, but it is cheaper to play. So, there are five possible positions.

Stack size is another important variable. Speculative hands prefer deep-stack play, so that there is potential for a huge reward if you make your hand. Let's say stack sizes are deep (M of 50 or more), medium (M of 20 to 49), small (M of 8 to 19), and tiny (M of 3 to 7). In case you have forgotten, M is the number of rounds you can play if you fold every hand. It is found by dividing your stack size by the CPR (cost per round of antes and blinds). M indicates strategies. Big M's dictate conservatism. Try to make big hands and trap your opponents for their whole stack. Small M's dictate aggression. Your downside is limited, and you will run out of chips if you don't do something soon. (Of course, in a cash game, you might elect to add to your stack rather than play with a small M). With these divisions by size, we see that there are four possible M's.

Action prior to you is obviously a major factor in making your decisions. You may have the chance to be first in (any players ahead of you have folded). There may be one or more limpers ahead of you. There may be a raiser. He may be the only active opponent ahead of you, or there may be limpers ahead of him or callers after him. It is always dangerous to call a raiser. It is even more dangerous to call someone who has raised after an early-position limper. Why? First, the raiser is much less likely to be bluffing and much more likely to have a very good hand, since he has a limper to worry about. Second, you face some danger that the limper will reraise. Calling a raise and then a reraise will result in your putting way too much money into the pot preflop with what is almost certainly a speculative hand. Speculative hands should be played as cheaply as possible preflop. If we lump all of the possible types of prior action into these groups, we find that there are four types.

There are two more things to consider. The first consideration is your table image. This is usually based on the number of hands you play and how aggressively you play them. If you have played only a few hands, and the hands you've shown were good, your opponents will think you are tight. It may be hard to get them to pay off your big hands, but bluffs and semibluffs will be more likely to work. If you have played a lot of hands and the ones that you've shown have been weak or bluffs, your opponents will perceive you as loose. It is also easy to be seen as playing down the middle. Any of these three levels of hand selection can be combined with a playing style that is aggressive, average, or passive. This leads to a total of nine possible table images, ranging from tight-aggressive to loose-passive.

The second consideration is the composition of your table. You may have pros or amateurs. You may have players who are just starting the session, and are playing solid poker. On the other hand, you might have players who have been up all night losing and drinking. These opponents will be anything but solid. Your opponents may be predictable, controllable, or readable, or just the opposite. There really are an infinite number of combinations of players who may be at your table, but for counting purposes, let's use the same classification system for the table that we used for our own table image - nine possible combinations.

Based on the factors subdivided by this simplistic method, we see that there are six key factors in playing suited aces. They are kicker (five cases), position (five cases), stack size (four cases), prior action (four cases), table image (nine cases), and table composition (nine cases). By multiplying these numbers, we see that there are 32,400 possible situations. Wow! I guess I should give up the idea of discussing each situation in a separate column. I will try to devote at least one column to each of the six key factors, and discuss a representative hand that is at least somewhat illustrative of how you should take that factor into consideration.

Steve "Zee" Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at many major tournaments and playing on Full Tilt, as one of its pros. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A - Nice Guy Eddie's on Houston and Doc Holliday's on 9th Street - in New York City.