Naked Aces

Sometimes, in the noise and confusion of today’s modern poker vocabulary — your awkward stack sizes, non-exploitable shoves, light four-betting, and so on — it’s easy to lose the forest in the conceptual trees. It’s not that the modern vocabulary’s not worth knowing; heck, even someone as old school as I can ICM (Independent Chip Model) with the best of them (if the best of them are satisfied to have only a rudimentary grasp of the concept). But like my grandmother used to say, “You have to learn to walk before you can pitch forward on your face.” No matter how rarefied the air of poker thought becomes, fundamentals will always matter. You can talk range merging and +EV [positive expected value] plays till you’re blue in the face, but if you still play garbage hands out of position, you can still expect to lose. So, for the sake of our fundamentals, let’s review some truths about everyone’s favorite card, the ace — and specifically, the naked ace: an ace with a bad kicker. We won’t use metagame considerations or complex math (and we won’t call our opponent “villain”). We’ll just try to remind ourselves that naked aces are tough to play well, no matter how deeply stacked our poker vocabulary has become.

Fold Early, Fold Often: While it’s fun to get carried away by awesome power of out-of-position floats against weak-tight opponents, and other above-the-rim poker moves, let’s not forget that a hand like A-8 plays as poorly out of position against weak-tight foes as it does against everyone else; worse, in fact, because what hands are weak-tight players most likely to get involved with? Big pairs and better aces. It’s hard to float your ace into a made hand. No matter how fancy you fancy yourself to be, folding naked aces out of position should remain your default setting.

Call Unraised Pots With A-X Suited: The one naked ace about which you can get genuinely excited is a suited one, if you have position on a large field in an unraised pot. Just remember that you’re drawing to a flush here — or, more specifically, drawing to a flush draw. If the color comes, your opponents will notice, and if savvy, will deny you the right price to draw. So, make sure that you’re playing your suited naked aces under optimal conditions. You need a roster of weak, loose foes, you need the right price, and you really need position. Remember, “suitedness” adds only about 3 percent of value to this hand overall, and sophisticated opponents can make that value disappear just by betting correctly.

Avoid Kicker Trouble: This seems self-evident, I know, but FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome) is like an IED (Improvised Explosive Device), just waiting to spew collateral damage. Many tricky players project that same level of trickiness onto everyone else. Then, when an ace comes, instead of crediting their foes with a hand, they think they’re just getting messed with. Well, guess what? Most of the time, people have the hand that they’re representing. Playing aces with bad kickers can blind you to this fact, and then the IED goes “boom.”

Don’t Overplay Top Pair, Top Kicker: On a flop like 7-3-2, your A-7 suddenly looks golden. But what if you encounter resistance? Can you really hope that your opponents are that excited about K-7 or Q-7? Not really; anyone who goes to war with you here likely has an overpair, at least. And even if you do have the best hand (a big if), you still have to fade a ton of overcards on the turn and river. Your best result is betting and having everyone fold, but that’s not betting with the best hand, that’s bluffing. Bluff if you like — but just don’t mistake a low top pair and big kicker for two tickets to paradise.

Monitor the Any-Ace Line: In a full ring game, there are some people who will play any ace, at any time, from any position. Such games are said to have a very low any-ace line. In other games, players get away from their naked aces, or play them only in position. This sort of game has a higher any-ace line. When trying to figure out what to do with your own naked aces (apart from mucking them, which is never a terrible play), you’ll need to figure out where the any-ace line is, and play above it; that is, play better aces, on average, than your foes do. A hand like A-8 plays great in games in which people will play A-2, but horribly in games in which they will not.

Push Two Pair: If you happen to get involved with something like A-5 and the board comes A-K-5, don’t get cute. Just go ahead and play your strong hand strongly. You’re looking for K-Q to get out of line here, and you’re especially looking for A-Q and A-J to think they’re holding chicken dinner. How do you know that you’re not up against A-K? Because A-K probably would have raised or reraised preflop, and your wretched A-5 would have found its way to the muck. Again, in today’s world of overwhelming nomenclature, it’s useful to remember some basic rules, like: When you get the goods, bet the goods. That’s how winning poker is played.

Any Ace That’s Not Good is Bad: That’s any ace from A-9 on down. In raised pots, or in bad position, or against problematic foes, even A-10 and A-J are bad. Yes, an ace is a good card, but it’s not a get-out-of-jail-free card. The worse your kicker, the worse your prospects. So, practice patience. Wait for better hands. Don’t let naked aces drag you down.

Fold Early, Fold Often: Did we say that already? Well, it bears repeating. Aces with small kickers are bad hands. They don’t play well out of position. They don’t play well against sophisticated opponents. They just plain don’t play well at all. Really, the only time they’re any good is when you’ve taken control of the betting and convinced your foes that your bad ace is actually a good one. But in that case, your naked ace might as well be a Numpty (6-2), because now you’re bluffing, and now it really doesn’t matter what you have.

The poker world is changing. People know more than they did before, and that’s great. But the rules of the game haven’t changed, and the ranks of hands haven’t changed. So, treat your naked aces like the problem children they are, and let other, friskier, players go broke with them, instead.

Speaking of the changing poker world, have you seen The Micros yet? This series is the animated brainchild of John Wray and Jay Rosenkrantz, and it’s a must-see for any poker buff. I’m not their press agent, folks, just a fan — and you will be, too. So check out The Micros on YouTube. It’ll pass the time while you’re folding naked aces. ♠

John Vorhaus is the author of the Killer Poker book series and the poker novel Under the Gun. He resides in cyberspace at radarenterprizes.com. Photo: Gerard Brewer.