Suited Aces - Part VII

When I write a series of columns, I often repeat information from the previous columns in the series. There are two reasons for this. First, you may not have read or may not remember the previous columns. Second, repetition is absolutely necessary to acquire any skill. I don't care whether it is learning poker, golf, basketball, a foreign language, or the multiplication tables. If you don't repeat the fundamentals, you will never achieve mastery. Having strong poker fundamentals is extremely valuable. It will often help you avoid making major errors when you are tired or losing a lot. There are several factors involved in playing suited aces. They are:

• Quality of the kicker
• Position
• Stack size
• Prior action
• Your table image
• Composition of your table

When most games were deep-stack cash games and tournaments were few and far apart, no one ever talked about the importance of stack size. Short-stack decisions in a cash game are relatively unimportant. If you are in a $100-$200 blinds game in which you bought in for $15,000 and are down to your last $1,500 (M of 5, or seven-and-a-half big blinds), mistakes won't cost you much equity. Your real result will be established when your stack is back in the 10,000 zone or even higher, either because you ran it up or because you put more money on the table. Short-stack decisions become crucial in a tournament. You may find yourself down to an M of 5 when there are only a few tables left or even at the final table. In these cases, the play you choose may create a tremendous swing in your equity. Since tournaments have become so popular, both live and online, players have analyzed the effect of stack size on decisions. Stack size influences both your choice of hands to play and how you should play them.

Let's look at a sample hand and see how it plays with various stack sizes, while keeping all of the other factors constant. A-6 suited plays the worst of the suited aces (kicker quality). The 6 is the lowest kicker that you can have without the ability to make a wheel (A-2-3-4-5) by using three cards from the board. Yes, you will do well when all in preflop against A-2 suited, winning about 57 percent of the time. But in reality, you won't know that your opponent has such a bad kicker, so you won't win much with your winners but might lose a lot when he hits a straight. In any case, the quality of your kicker is low. This makes A-6 suited a speculative hand. That is to say, it is a hand with which you want to see a cheap flop and have many opponents.

You are in the hijack seat (position). This is the seat two before the button, which is considered mildly late position. Everyone folds before you (prior action). You have been at this table for a while, and your image is pretty close to your reality: You play a tight-aggressive game (your table image). The table is nine-handed, but since the players before you have folded, you have to worry about only the cutoff, the button, and the blinds. The cutoff seems tight and passive. The button is a tough pro. He is known for being extremely aggressive, but is certainly not a maniac. The small blind seems tight, but moderately aggressive. The big blind is unknown to you (table composition).

I know that my coverage of the factors affecting the way A-6 suited should be played has been rather cursory. In a real game, you would develop a much deeper understanding of these factors than my summary version. Let us assume that this is a tournament, and you are now playing 200-400 blinds with a 50 ante. It costs 1,050 per round (CPR). For the rest of this column, I want to look at how the hand should be played with various stack sizes. The best measure of stack size is M - which is your chip count divided by the CPR. (Some authors refer to this as CSI, but M seems more popular.) Let's examine four different M's - a big one, a medium one, a moderately small one, and a really tiny one. Assume that your remaining opponents have you covered.

M = 100: This is definitely a big M. You are playing deep-stack poker, with a speculative hand. If there were some limpers, I would feel quite comfortable limping. In this case, we will be first in, if we decide to play. A-6 suited will not match up well against most of the hands that would call, and this is true whether you flat-call or raise. My choice would be to make a normal raise - to around three or three-and-a-half big blinds. I want to charge anyone who wants to chase me. A raise also will make it is easier to play if someone else gets aggressive behind me. If someone reraises, I can fold unless I think he is likely to be bluffing or the raise is very small. If I felt some tension behind me, especially from the aggressive button, I'd just fold. If I thought the blinds would call a raise but might not raise themselves, I might just call, trying to win a monster pot with the right flop.

M = 30: Even though my M is a lot smaller than it was in the first case, I'd still raise. In fact, adding to my stack is slightly more useful. I might consider folding, but I'd practically never consider limping. Great situations don't come along often enough to warrant risking a call in hope of winning 30 times the pot. Notice that in the first case, I might have won 100 times the pot, so the limp has more upside.

M = 6: Now we are in small M territory. I can discard two possibilities, limping and making a normal raise. The big implied odds needed to justify a limp aren't there. I can't make a normal raise without becoming pot-committed. Therefore, the most natural choice is to go all in. I still have enough chips to make someone with a marginal hand fold. (I think most players would fold hands like A-9, A-8, or A-7, which have me dominated.) If I thought that one of the blinds would call or if moving up one position in the standings was worth some money, I would probably fold.

M = 3: There's no choice here. I'm all in. I guess that on the bubble (one place away from the money) in a big multitable tournament in which several players at other tables have fewer chips than I do and will have to take the blinds first, the right equity play is to fold. Even in this case, my best chance to win the tournament is the all-in move. My opponents know that I'm "desperate," and will often call with pretty weak hands. The fact that I'm suited isn't as important as the fact that my A-6 will often be favored over hands like A-4 or K-J, which might call, especially from the blinds.

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.